Every year, the heat becomes a bigger topic of the Tour de France than the year before. This year, it’s become such a problem that, friend of myWindsock, Victor Campenaerts has foregone his socks. France has always been pretty warm in July and heat has always been a problem at Le Tour, but it does … Continue reading “The Tour de France is hotting up”

Stage 1 of the Tour de France this year is a 19.6km lap of Barcelona. The weird thing about this year’s tour is that riders get their own individual time on GC, rather than the entire team getting the same time as the 3rd or 4th rider across the line. This opens up a conundrum … Continue reading “How to pace a TTT”

This weekend marks the 2026 RTTC National 50 mile championships. Riders will tackle a 3 lap course near Congleton in the North West of England. View the J4/34 course forecast. Set just two weekends ago, the course records on the new J4/34 course are 1:47:29 and and 2:11:58 for men and women respectively – though … Continue reading “National 50 Course Preview”

Have you ever Googled “How to ride my bike faster”? If you have, this one’s for you. If you were to raise your FTP by 10 Watts it might take you between 8 and 12 weeks depending on your level of experience and the quality of your training – but you can get 10 Watts … Continue reading “Ride faster, not harder”

We’re into hot day season, with a heatwave arriving in the UK it feels like a good time to talk about density. The density of the air is essentially “how many air particles exist in each metre cubed of air”. This is the cause of a day feeling slower than it should be. It’s usually … Continue reading “What makes a slow day?”

Yesterday, we predicted a winning time of 42:54 in the Giro d’Italia stage 10 time trial. Ganna, unsurprisingly, won the stage but he did so in a time of 45:53, almost 3 minutes slower than we predicted the winner would go. In his daily vlog, Victor Campenaerts said to Ganna that Visma had predicted his … Continue reading “Getting a prediction horribly wrong”

We’re going to put our money where our mouth is and try to predict the winning time of the Giro d’Italia Stage 10 TT then, after the race we’ll take a look at how we did and what this means for the first Tour de France time trial. This blog will not predict who will … Continue reading “Giro d’Italia TT – predicting the winning time”

If you’re allowed to share the work, why does a TTT feel so much harder than an individual time trial? This is, of course, dependent on the team. I’ve been in team time trials where I’m the strongest rider, and team time trials when I’ve been the weakest rider yet the hardest TTTs are always … Continue reading “The physics of a Team Time Trial”

When planning my week, I used to use my Apple weather app to decide which days I’ll ride inside vs outside yet increasingly, as winter turns to spring, I find myself sat on the turbo looking out the window at a sunny day. This is the result of weather forecasts being weighted toward pessimism. If … Continue reading “Don’t believe the forecast”

Club TTs are a fun affair. Collecting numbers out the back of someone’s car, pinning each other in a freezing cold car park, handing over cash and lining up in a lay-by. To the uninitiated, it could look a bit odd. Recently, there was a club TT in my village so I can attest to … Continue reading “How to make the most of a club time trial”