Castelli | InsiderNews – Page 3

castelli, CHPT3, love hate, paris, rbx, roubaix - April 10, 2020

“The Racer” Extract: The Hell Of The North

The 2020 Paris-Roubaix is at best postponed, it will be conspicuous in its absence this weekend. It is an early-season highlight for any fan of cycling – we’re treating CHPT3 followers to exclusive, full extracts from David Millar’s book, “The Racer”. Winner of the Cycling Book of the Year, David writes from the perspective of a professional, preparing for the race and providing an enthralling look inside the crazy race with no details left out. “It’s one thing to love watching a race, it’s another to love doing it. Paris–Roubaix is an example of this: it’s easy to love as a fan, much harder as a racer. The love hate relationship is real. I’ve started it three times and none of those times ended particularly well – which is another way of saying I didn’t finish. It’s known as ‘the Hell of the North’, something people often mistake as being attributable to its renowned difficulty and the famous images of exhausted racers looking like they’ve been to hell and back. It actually originates from the 1919 edition, when it was held for the first time since the First World War had ended, and travelled through a devastated northern France – ...

QUIZ: How Well Do You Know Paris-Roubaix?

Keep Healthy During The Coronavirus Quarantine

An early coach of mine used to say: “Fail to plan, is planning to fail.” But how do you plan in a year where literally the wheels came off so bad? March and April are months that every cyclist anticipates dearly. For the pro tour riders, it’s the Classics and for most amateur riders it’s time for training camps, early season races or just the sheer joy of warmer temperatures, longer daylight hours and big rides on the to-do list. Not this time: most countries are in pandemic lockdown mode. The situation differs from country to country. While some don’t even allow cyclists to ride outside, others still accept individual rider doing their spring training. All races are canceled until the end of June and this makes all kinds of planning very challenging. And this means that your season build needs to be completely redesigned. For the serious bike racer there comes another challenge: how do I keep my body composition (not just weight, but fat percentage as well) in check with a completely changed training regime or how do I adapt my planned diet to these moving targets? I want to share a few essential points and recommendations on ...

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#RideItOut - March 28, 2020

How to enhance your cycling game when in quarantine

But aside from honing our form, what else can we do to enhance our cycling game when in quarantine? IMPROVE SLEEP HYGIENE Where long work commutes may have once had us up at the crack of dawn, many of those now working from home have the luxury of an extra hour in bed. And without professional sport on TV at night, there’s a lot less blue light around to disrupt our circadian rhythm. It seems like the perfect time to hone one of the most critical factors in recovery, our sleep hygiene. It’s important because when we sleep better, we also recover faster. There’s no big mystery around how to improve sleep. For many, it comes down to eliminating distractions and exercising the discipline to follow through with a plan, much like a cycling training program. Here are several things you can incorporate into your new daily routines: 1. No caffeine in the afternoon or evening 2. Avoid screens late a night, as the exposure to blue light disturbs your biorhythms 3. Get some morning sun in your eyes 4. Consider natural supplements like magnesium, ashwagandha, or L-theanine to slow you down in the hours before bed BOOST YOUR IMMUNE ...

Dress up to stay indoors

Smart trainers are now so realistic that you can almost forget you’re riding indoors. They allow us to experience the road feel and even suffer at the hands of a stiff headwind via dynamic resistance changes on smart trainers. Unfortunately that wind is only virtual, and even with a powerful fan it’s still hard to regulate your body temperature indoors. To combat this we developed the Insider Bibshorts and Insider Jersey. INSIDER BIBSHORTS Comfort is everything indoors and we’ve designed the bibshorts we’d want for ourselves. Cool and comfortable with good wicking ability and just enough padding, they ensure optimal comfort on muggy indoor rides. The 80% polyester construction helps wick sweat away while our lighter KISS Air2 seat pad finds the optimal balance between excellent padding with reduced overall coverage. INSIDER JERSEY Our Insider Jersey tailored for the rigors of indoor training and includes a 3D Mesh fabric that ensures maximum airflow to keep you cool when the heat and intensity of indoor workouts build. In addition, the 100% polyester design ensures that excess moisture is quickly wicked away to help keep you cool and dry. With a low collar and short waist, it’s designed for maximum cooling, while ...