A Cyclist’s Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

Western society totally idolises an athletic body shape but resents the physical exertion required to attain it. We try to minimise human physical work by any means possible. As far as I’m concerned, every time you switch on any form of electrical equipment, you’re basically signing an invisible contract that reads:

“I accept that as a consequence of using this device, I risk becoming physically and/or mentally unhealthy”

We choose to avoid using our muscles at each and every oportunity and then suddenly wonder why we’re obese. We drive to work, drive home and then drive to the gymnasium (if at all). Most of us have even become too lazy to cook or make anything for ourselves - we invent power tools & kitchen utensils to do it all for us. Take this scenario for instance:

Rather than whip a cake using a wooden spoon the old-fashioned way, we’d now sooner collectively sit in front of a computers all day long, earn enough money for a mechanical cake mixer which can do it for us (basically employing a whole host of product design engineers, entrepreneurs, the sales & marketing department, and everyone else who works in the wholesale and retail chain). [Read more →]

Tags: Mental Anguish, Vida Enigmática by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Alberto Contador, winner of this season’s Giro de Italia and Vuelta a España confirmed his continuation with team Astana next season alongside his American team mate Lance Armstrong. Contador assured that the Astana team will prepare in Tenerife at the end of November 2008.

“I’ve been analysing the diferent situations and thinking about alternatives since half way through the Vuelta and after meeting with my director, Johan Bruyneel, and having spoken of the last few months, we have resolved whatever type of tension between us”, said Contador.

“We have already spoken about what my schedule will be in the next season and consequently, I can affirm that I will be in team Astana next year”, added the spanish rider. “I have taken the decision to keep going because I think that it’s more certain, since I can count on a great group of trusting men around me who have done their best with me in each race and that should permit me to keep fighting for victory with the best guarantee”, explained Contador.

The arrival of Armstrong has been the main cause of friction. “I think that everything is going to perform much better than what it appeared to in the beginning. If each one of have our own agenda there won’t be any type of problem or inconvenience. For me it’s a pleasure to coincide within the same team as a great racer who I’ve always admired”, he said. “It’s also true that I am ambitious and when he established that he wanted to win his 8th tour, I thought that co-existence would be complicated, but I think that with a good team management there won’t be problems in France. For the rest of the year, it doesn’t inconvenience me”, he continued.

Alberto Contador is still finalysing his race calendar for the next season. What seems decided is that he will race the Tour in the biggest three weejs. “My idea is to race only in the Tour at 100%, because this year it’s hard for me to recover from the strength of the Giro and the Vuelta”, he assured. Contador still hasn’t spoken directly with Armstrong. “We have a training camp in Tenerife at the end of November and there we will speak with our directors to avoid any type of arguments, because perhaps there has been an excessive expectation with all this, even though it is understandable”, he said. [Read more →]

Tags: Island Life, Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
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I admit that only a few months ago I did not have the physical energy required for cycling long distances. Just getting out on my bike required a huge mental effort. Every time I went out and came back, I never seemed to improve and there were very few rewards. Normally, after a little break of a few months, it’d take me three, four or at most five rides before my fitness level returned to ‘normal’. That was when I was in my twenties. But last summer I turned 31. I’d gone out regularly more than a dozen times and I was still finding it rather difficult. I guess that’s what it means to be in your thirties!

I no longer had that lively spring in my pedalling stroke. You know the feeling when the road in front of you starts to ramp up, and you jump off the saddle and dance on those pedals a bit like Marco Pantani climbing in the French Alps? Well that feeling had completely vanished. Hell, even my own sweat reaked of somebody else. Realising this only made me more determined - I wasn’t going to permit myself turn into yet another fat bastard quite so easily! [Read more →]

Tags: Learning Curve by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Hello fellow cyclists,

For a long time I’ve been meaning to start my own column dedicated to answering questions about the multitude of materials used in bicycle frame and components. I’ve decided to write this article after reading several questions directly related to materials posted on online bike forums.

Materials and bikes go hand in hand so it’s great to see many riders already have a basic understanding of the general properties of materials. The thing is, most people are simply not qualified to answer detailed questions about the nature of materials. And it seems that some people would rather promptly give an answer -any answer- sooner than get the real facts. They give the wrong information. Mis-information.

You see the same old stuff which has been regurgitated by bicycle magazines and cyclists for the last decade. Eventually the bicycle industry catches onto something new and a buzz word is formed. There are equally as many myths floating about. I suspect that the majority of bicycle companies and component manufacturers only talk about materials to increase their sales. Yes I believe a lot of it is marketing hype. Some of it is not. I’m here to introduce you to some important but little-known concepts about Materials.

What so great about Materials Science?
It’s basically study of the physical & mechanical properties of all Materials including metals, ceramics, polymers, composites, semiconductors and superconductors. We research and test materials’ strength, stiffness, density, corrosion and a whole host of other important properties. More than any other field, Materials Science tries to seek out what is actually happening at the atomic, molecular and microstructural level.

Chemists tend to stick to atoms and molecules. Physicists tend to look more at the subatomic. Engineers lean towards the macroscopic. This leaves Materials Science to fill a truly gaping void. It is an underappreciated scale - one which you can’t see but gives rise to almost all physical properties of materials. [Read more →]

Tags: Learning Curve by Dr. Leslie Brown
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The worlds’ gone stark-raving mad. You hear responses like this to absurd news stories spoken every single day. What exactly am I referring to? I’m referring to insane cases of “personal rights, freedoms and civil liberties” in the simultaneous “age of political correctness”. These two forces do not belong in the same time zone and space. It’s like matter and anti-matter, except that as soon as they come into contact, good old common sense implodes along with them.

Young people these days that claim they have the right to steal, vandalise, assault, rape, abuse, and generally do whatever the bloody hell they feel like. Okay, but then to compensate for their illegal behaviour you expect some sort of justice. You expect that when they get caught, they’ll be reprimanded by the full extent of the law. Not so. Instead, they go and slip on some marbles while robbing the plasma telly inside an innocent person’s home and sue the owner for negligence. [Read more →]

Tags: Mental Anguish by Dr. Leslie Brown
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About 5 years ago I used to train with a campagnolo ergobrain cycling computer as well as a S-710 polar HRM (with the additional power unit). That gave me every imaginable readout including: speed, distance, heart rate, estimated calories burned, power output, cadence (pedalling rate), pedalling index (or efficiency), digital gear indicator, current temperature & altitude …

This setup was great for long and boring rides but before long, I found myself looking at both LCD displays more and more and more. Eventually I felt that it was just information overload. I constantly aimed to beat my own times, lower my resting heart rate and burn the most calories possible. While I thought of this as part of training, I had unknowingly become a slave to the bicycle computer (or in this case computers).

After a while, I met a guy in the South of Sydney (Como bridge to be exact) who caught up to me from behind. He was obviously significantly faster than I was. I was suprised to see that there were no electronics at all on his bike at all. When I asked the inevitable “why” question, he said to me that he’d just be worrying about the readouts too much and not concentrating on riding the actual bike. Now being a techno-geek back then, I just couldn’t understand that mentality at the time. I used to think like this: “if a new technology is available, you have to have it”. Plain and simple. He didn’t change me on the spot, but his philosophy nevertheless made me think twice about what I was doing. Was I nothing more than a consumer victim? He certainly opened my mind to the idea of cycling without any electronics equipment. [Read more →]

Tags: Learning Curve by Dr. Leslie Brown
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