PezCycling News - What's Cool In Pro Cycling : Vuelta’17 St.2: Last K Lampaert!

It's no secret Tom Ritchey loves steel. We spoke at length about why he feels steel is the optimal material for a bike frame, and how after 40 years building frames, this age-old wunder-material has come back into vogue. Here's a fly-by video of his Logic Road steel bike...

Catlike takes it's name from Pepe del Ramo’s inheritance of his fathers racing passion and his nickname “El Gato”. Their top line Mixino road helmet hits the review bench.

I took some Arundel Bicycle Company Rubber Gecko bar tape to the local playground and taped up the most popular swing-thing there. One year later, after countless neighbourhood kids have left their mark dangling, screaming, and having fun - the tape remains in place, intact, and still going strong.

Bont’s Vaypor+ shoes use the tricks of the custom shoe making trade learned over the past 40 years.  Inze Bont started the biz in 1974 for cycling and skate. Moldable composites provides the low weight, stiffness and formed fit required for today’s customizable performance.

The Bell Stratus MIPS equipped helmet is a lotta value for $150 - featuring big vents and deep air channels, their latest advances in fitting comfort, and 50 years of Bell's leading & respected helmet tech. Here's the PEZ review...

Pirelli go back to their roots as performance Cycling tire makers and introduce the PZero Velo, PZero Velo 4s and PZero Velo TT clincher series tires. Current sole suppliers for Formula 1 (Auto) and World Superbike (Motorcycle), Pirelli have returned to their roots as they see the bicycle as the future for racing, transport and the environment.

With the 2017 Vuelta a España starting on Saturday for the pros and that now is the season for big summer rides for the rest of us. How does one fuel these big efforts, and how good are we at maintaining energy balance throughout multiple days of hard riding?

Most of us ride our bikes for fun, not a pay cheque, so why do we do it? Why is the fascination with pain and suffering so deeply ingrained into our enjoyment of cycling?

Don’t start in a hole! Cyclocross is great fun and makes for some excellent fall training, but be careful and smartly manage your fatigue if you just completed a full season of road or MTB racing.

Le Tour: Twenty one days and two thousand miles, by any measure it is a massive amount of work. While you may not undertake anything approaching Tour de France proportions, you may well face the risk of overtraining. How can you identify, and more importantly prevent this season derailing occurrence?

BMC Racing Team will return to racing in France next week with a strong group of riders heading to the start line at Tour Poitou-Charentes on Tuesday (22 August).

A bunch sprint? A reduced one? Or a solo attacker making it all the way to the line? All these scenarios are likely in the EuroEyes Cyclassics, which this year runs its 22nd edition.

The 20th of August will be a cycling celebration in one of the largest German cities Hamburg. Apart from the central event of the day the World Tour race Hamburg Cyclassics, thousands of cyclists are to test themselves in amateur races with 60,120 and 180 kilometres distance.

The Hamburg Cyclassics debuted in 1996 - with a pro race already consisting of 100 professional cyclists. Since 2005, the pro race has been a part of the sport’s peak competition, the UCI WorldTour and is considered to be one of the sport’s major one-day cycling races world-wide.

The high point of the 2017 Le Tour de France was the mighty Col du Galibier at 2645m altitude. I "rode" it last year with Velo Classic Tours - maybe better to say I hauled my carcass up it. Here's a glimpse of the climb as I get inside 3km to the summit. It really is epic & awe inspiring - a must do.

This time next week - Saturday the 1st of July - the 2017 Tour de France will set off from Düsseldorf in Germany for the three week wheeled battle. As the 'Vaterland' is the home of some of the best sausages in the World, we look back at the Pez Grand Tour appreciation of the sausage.

TOP RIDE: Inside the last 3km to the summit of the 21.5km Col du Glandon, the air gets thin as we approach 1924m elevation, the road tilts to 11% grades, and each meter seems longer than the last one. There's a reason they call this one 'Hors Category'.

Prudential RideLondon is the world’s greatest festival of cycling, taking place on the 28-30 July 2017.  Created as a legacy of the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games to inspire more people to take up cycling and showcase London and Surrey, if offers seven different cycling events to participate in or watch over the three day festival.