Self Righteous Cyclist

RADL GRVL , what's with all the missing vowels? Don’t worry, they didn’t lose the vowels, they just put them on low‑weight gravel wheels to save grams. For one week each year Adelaide turns into a cycling mecca as thousands of cycling enthusiasts, pro-teams and aspiring pros turn up for the Tour Down Under and the myriad of support events around the week. RADL GRVL is one of those events and came about through the commitment of Adelaide local and current pro cyclist  Tiffany Cromwell and her partner Valteri Bottas of F1 fame, to create an event that captured the essence of the varied terrain and the beauty of the McLaren Vale region from a different perspective. The event is now in its third year and caters for professional, elite and age group riders, has gone from strength to strength. With over 100 elite men and women racing, the field represented the strongest ever assembled in Australia for a gravel race.  The event gathered even more cache, when it became the inaugural ...

I love to climb and have always wanted to do the 7 Peaks Challenge  so why not add another 5 classified climbs to the list to create my own version of the 12 days of Christmas, get some solid training in over the festive season and call it the 12 climbs of Xmas. I am not going to review each climb because that's already been done by the Climbing Cyclist , who breaks down each climb and has some very solid advice on how to approach these climbs. While Omeo to Dinner Plain does not have a climb classification, the  42km of staircase like climbing with 8 category 3 or 4 climbs over 2 hours, was one of the toughest assignments of the lot. Taking on this excessive load over the course of two weeks, provided me with an ideal supercompensation training block. In the process, I accumulated a Training Stress Score (TSS) of  2,072, about 25% above my 6 week average total and produced some record power number numbers, so there's a lot to be said for going a little overboard. Superco...