It’s well understood in cycling circles how good you need to be to win World Tour men’s races with a summit finish, but the data as to how fast you need to ride up a hill in the women’s field is a little more sparse and not reported on as widely. In 2026, the Tour … Continue reading “Bridging the data gap – the Tour de France Femmes”

Tour de France Femmes 2026 Route stage 4 preview: Gevrey-Chambertin – Dijon. The race’s only individual time trial and the only course preview that takes account of the weather! The first major GC shakeup is expected in the first stage of the Tour de France Femmes in the TT that takes place in the land … Continue reading “Tour de France Femmes Stage 4 Preview”

Runners are getting faster, whether it’s shoe tech, altitude or something in the water there’s no denying that the times are getting fast. As we know, aerodynamic resistance increases with the cube of speed which means the impact of aerodynamics becomes important very quickly. Recently, we’ve seen an example of this. When Josh Kerr broke … Continue reading “The Aerodynamics of Running”

The second race against the clock has just taken place in this year’s Tour de France and it was an interesting watch from the perspective of an amateur time trialing enthusiast. The course started in Évian-les-Bains and was relatively short at only 26.1km in length, but the terrain made it truly challenging. The first 10km … Continue reading “What we learned from the Tour de France TT”

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”