By John Thomas, 13th November 2018 www.alpinecadence.com The alarm clock was set for 4am but as always before a big event I woke before that. I’d managed more than 5 hours of deep sleep, for me that’s fantastic before something like this. My sleeping
By John Thomas, 25th October 2018 My journey to Taiwan effectively started last November when I decided to commit to this crazy event. My physical journey would start though in Milan, not too far from where I’m based in France. A very pleasant Cathay Pacific flight via Hong Kong ensued. As we approached Taiwan I
By John Thomas, 16th October 2018 Just 10 days to go now until the big day and preparations are all going to plan. Last weekend I returned from our Alpine Cadence Giro Sardegna trip, my last big block of riding before Taiwan and what a fabulous block it was! In a big week covering the
By John Thomas, 8th October 2018 To have a goal for 2018 of riding competitively up a mountain for about 4 hours at the end of October has certainly created some changes to my normal yearly routine. Those folks who know me well are used to the non cycling version of me, ‘October John’, who
By John Thomas, 18th September 2018 In just over 5 weeks time I’ll be competing in perhaps my most exciting cycling event ever, the Taiwan KOM Challenge. In the weeks to come I’ll write about every aspect of the event including my own preparation, equipment choices, the course, the logistics and the race day itself.
We made it! The whole team has completed stage 7 safely here’s the tale of how it went. Our final stage would see us ride 125kms and a humble 1400m of climbing in relation to previous days. Our only major climb for the day would be the Col d’Aspin, 12km at an average gradient
Stage 6 had a bit of everything, 129km and 3300m of climbing with a huge variety of riding wrapped up inside it. We set off from Saint Lary in the perfect conditions that we’ve become accustomed to this week. It was pretty much racing from the gun today, a neutralised first few hundred metres and
Every 7 day Haute Route event has a time trial. In many ways it can be seen as a bit of a day off. One hill to climb, a much later start, so longer in bed and plenty of recovery time in the afternoon too. This has been a very ‘front loaded’ Haute Route with
Stage 4 was always going to be massive. 4000m of climbing crammed into 102km takes some doing. Today we would scale Tourmalet again, then the gorgeous Hourquette Ancizan, with the Col de Portet providing a vey tough finish to the day. Again, perfect conditions. The forecast was for even warmer temperatures. Suits me fine. I’m
Today’s stage was 117km long incorporating 3300m of climbing. The principal ‘difficulties’ as the French beautifully describe climbs in bike race, were the Col du Tourmalet and the Col du Couraduque. Yet again, fantastic conditions greeted us at the start with a nice, warm day ahead of us. Despite the big altitude differences in the