Pro Cycling on $10 a Day

Author: Phil Gaimon
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 1937716554
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
In his book Pro Cycling on $10 a Day, Phil Gaimon brings the full powers of his wit to tell his story. Plump, grumpy, slumped on the couch, and going nowhere fast at age 16, Phil Gaimon began riding a bicycle with the grand ambition of shedding a few pounds before going off to college. He soon fell into racing and discovered he was a natural, riding his way into a pro contract after just one season despite utter ignorance of a century of cycling etiquette. Presented here as a guide--and a warning--to aspiring racers who dream of joining the professional racing circus, Phil’s adventures in road rash serve as a hilarious and cautionary tale of frustrating team directors and broken promises. Phil’s education in the ways of the peloton, his discouraging negotiations for a better contract, his endless miles crisscrossing America in pursuit of race wins, and his conviction that somewhere just around the corner lies the ticket to the big time fuel this tale of hope and ambition from one of cycling’s best story-tellers. Pro Cycling on $10 a Day chronicles the racer’s daily lot of blood-soaked bandages, sleazy motels, cheap food, and overflowing toilets. But it also celebrates the true beauty of the sport and the worth of the journey, proving in the end that even among the narrow ranks of world-class professional cycling, there will always be room for a hard-working outsider.

Draft Animals

Author: Phil Gaimon
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524705004
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
From the author of the cult favorite Pro Cycling on $10 a Day and Ask a Pro, the story of one man’s quest to realize his childhood dream, and what happened when he actually did it. Like countless other kids, Phil Gaimon grew up dreaming of being a professional athlete. But unlike countless other kids, he actually pulled it off. After years of amateur races, hard training, living out of a suitcase, and never taking “no” for an answer, he finally achieved his goal and signed a contract to race professionally on one of the best teams in the world. Now, Gaimon pulls back the curtain on the WorldTour, cycling’s highest level. He takes readers along for his seasons in Europe, covering everything from rabid, water-bottle-stealing Belgian fans, to contract renewals, to riding in poisonous smog, to making friends in a sport plagued by doping. Draft Animals reveals a story as much about bike racing as it is about the never-ending ladder of achieving goals, failure, and finding happiness if you land somewhere in-between.

Ask a Pro

Author: Phil Gaimon
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 1937716902
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
Phil Gaimon’s Ask a Pro answers every question you’ve always wanted to ask about pro cycling…sort of. Gaimon gathers the best of his popular Q&A column—and pokes fun at his younger self. Despite the howling protests from his peers, no one’s ever been more willing to spill the beans on what it’s really like inside the pro cycling peloton than the sarcastic scribe Phil Gaimon. Building on the outrageous success of his hilarious 2014 debut, Pro Cycling on $10 a Day: From Fat Kid to Euro Pro, Gaimon gathers the absolute gems from his monthly Q&A feature column in VeloNews magazine into his new book, Ask a Pro: Deep Thoughts and Unreliable Advice from America’s Foremost Cycling Sage, adding a dose of fresh commentary and even more acerbic and sharp-eyed insights. With six years of material to work with—including his incredible rise into the pro ranks, the devastating loss of his contract for 2015, and his bold return to the Big League—Gaimon covers every possible topic from the team dinner table to the toilet with plenty of stops along the way. Gaimon offers wise-ass (and sometimes earnest) answers to fan questions like: How much chamois cream should I use? I’ve started shaving my legs. How can I be accepted by my friends? What do you do to protect yourself when you know you’re about to crash? How many bikes does my husband really need? What’s the best victory celebration? Do you practice yours? In women’s cycling, what is the proper definition of a pro? What do you say to someone if they honk or almost hit you? Do you name your bikes? What do pros think when they see a recreational cyclist in a full pro kit or riding a pro-level bike? Can you take your bike apart and put it back together? How bad does the weather have to be to call off a training ride? How do you know when it’s time to change a tire? When you’re in a breakaway all day, do riders form a future friendship? Riders keep complaining about "unsafe" weather at races. When did pro cyclists turn into such wussies? How do the pros define a "crash"? Gaimon wields his outsider’s wit to cast a cock-eyed gaze at the peculiar manners, mores, and traditions that make the medieval sport of cycling so irresistible to watch. Ask a Pro includes new resources from Gaimon, too, including his Cookie Map of America, dubious advice on winning the race buffet, a cautionary guide for host housing, Phil’s pre-race warm-up routine, and a celebrity baker’s recipe for The Phil Cookie.

Racing Through the Dark

Author: David Millar
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451682700
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 453

Book Description
WORLD-CLASS CYCLIST, Tour de France stage winner, and time trial specialist David Millar offers a vivid portrait of his life in professional cycling—including his soul-searing detour into performance-enhancing drugs, his dramatic arrest and two-year ban, and his ultimate decision to return to the sport he loves to race clean—in this arrestingly candid memoir, which he wrote himself. As a young Scottish expat living in Hong Kong with his father after his parents’ divorce, Millar showed early promise with mountain biking and BMX. Two wise local cyclists took him under their wings, encouraging him to concentrate on road racing. Millar proved a ready convert. Racing Through the Dark offers the winning account of his climb through the ranks—first as an amateur and then as a pro, riding for the French team Cofidis. Among his early triumphs were several stage wins in the Tour de France. From the moment Millar turned pro, he began to see hints of the unethical measures that many— maybe most—of the other pros were taking in order to race at the very tops of their games . . . and beyond. At first, he felt that he was immune to temptation, that he could win clean. But the ugly pervasiveness of performance-enhancing drugs and the seemingly universal attitude that condoned it began to corrode his willpower. Racing Through the Dark details his eventual capitulation, his subsequent arrest and two-year ban from cycling, and his remarkable comeback as a clean cyclist who is now doing his utmost to keep performance-enhancing drugs out of the sport he so loves. Filled with thrilling descriptions of the world’s most spectacular courses, Racing Through the Dark captures the pure joy of cycling and includes some of the most vivid accounts of racing ever written by a true insider.

Full Gas

Author: Peter Cossins
Publisher: Arrow
ISBN: 9781787290204
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
So how do you win a bike race? The author takes us on to the team buses to hear pro cyclists and directeurs sportifs explain their tactics: when it went right, when they got it wrong - from sprinting to summits, from breakaways to bluffing

Just Ride

Author: Grant Petersen
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
ISBN: 0761171274
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
“No matter what or how you ride, read this book and remind yourself just how enjoyable cycling can and should be.”—Eben Weiss, author of The Enlightened Cyclist Just Ride is a revelation. Forget the ultralight, uncomfortable bikes, flashy jerseys, clunky shoes that clip onto tiny pedals, the grinding out of endless miles. Instead, ride like you did when you were a kid—just get on your bike and discover the pure joy of riding it. A reformed racer who’s commuted by bike every day since 1980, whose writings and opinions appear in major bicycling and outdoor magazines, and whose company, Rivendell Bicycle Works, makes bikes for riders ready to opt out of a culture overrun by racing, Grant Petersen shares a lifetime of unexpected facts, controversial opinions, expert techniques, and his own maverick philosophy. In 87 short, two-to-three page chapters, it covers: Riding: Count Days, Not Miles; Corner Like Jackie Robinson; Steer with Your Hips, Shift with Your Legs Suiting Up: The Shoes Ruse; Ponchos—the Ultimate Unracer’s Garment Safety: #1 Rule—Be Seen; Helmets Aren’t All They’re Cracked Up to Be Health and Fitness: Why Riding Is Lousy All-Around Exercise; Saddles Don’t Cause Impotence; Drink When You’re Thirsty—Not Before Also includes chapters on Accessories, Upkeep, and Technicalities, and a final chapter titled “Velosophy” that includes the essential, memorable thought: Your Bike Is a Toy—Have Fun with It. Winner Silver Medal 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards

The Descent

Author: Thomas Dekker
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473551765
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Book Description
'I have success, money, women. I've been lionised by the public and the media. The world is at my feet. I've spread my wings and here I am, soaring above everything and everyone. But in reality, the descent has already begun.' Thomas Dekker was set to become one of pro cycling’s superstars. But before long, he found himself sucked in by the lure of hedonistic highs and troubled by the intense pressure to perform. In The Descent, Dekker tells his story of hotel room blood bags, shady rendezvous with drug dealers and late-night partying at the Tour de France. This is Dekker’s journey from youthful idealism to a sordid path of excess and doping that lays bare cycling’s darkest secrets like never before.

My World

Author: Peter Sagan
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 1948006111
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
In My World, Peter Sagan, one of cycling's greatest riders of all time, gives bike racing fans a glimpse behind the scenes of his cycling life, revealing the full extent of his dedication to competition and determination to win. With four Tour de France points jersey victories, three road race world championships, the 2018 Paris-Roubaix, and multiple spring classics among Sagan’s palmares, the world of cycling agrees that this intense yet fun-loving rider is among the most dominant and fun-to-watch riders of his generation. Inside My World, Sagan discusses his relationship with fellow riders, his heroes, and how he copes with the expectation of success. He also shares technical details about his preparation, dissects the art of the sprint, and analyzes the tactics that play out during a fiercely competitive stage or race.

The Monuments

Author: Peter Cossins
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408846829
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Book Description
'Peter Cossins is an engaging writer whose conversational style makes this an effortless yet interesting read. The cosy tone delivers a great deal with a good balance of history and anecdotes. If you wish to explore cycling beyond the Grand Tours this is the book.' - Carlton Kirby An awe-inspiring history of the five most legendary 'classic' races in world cycling. The Tour de France may provide the most obvious fame and glory, but it is cycling's one-day tests that the professional riders really prize. Toughest, longest and dirtiest of all are the so-called 'Monuments', the five legendary races that are the sport's equivalent of golf's majors or the grand slams in tennis. Milan–Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Tour of Lombardy date back more than a century, and each of them is an anomaly in modern-day sport, the cycling equivalent of the Monaco Grand Prix. Time has changed them to a degree, but they remain as brutally testing as they ever have been. They provide the sport's outstanding one-day performers – the likes of Philippe Gilbert, Fabian Cancellara, Mark Cavendish, Tom Boonen, Peter Sagan and Thor Hushovd – with a chance to measure themselves against each other and their predecessors in the most challenging tests in world cycling. From the bone-shattering bowler-hat cobbles of the Paris–Roubaix (rumoured to be Bradley Wiggins' next challenge) to the insanely steep hellingen in the Tour of Flanders, each race is as unique as the riders who push themselves through extreme exhaustion to win them and enter their epic history. Over the course of a century, only Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck have won all five races. Yet victory in a single edition of a Monument guarantees a rider lasting fame. For some, that one victory has even more cachet than success in a grand tour. Each of the Monuments has a fascinating history, featuring tales of the finest and largest characters in the sport. In The Monuments, Peter Cossins tells the tumultuous history of these extraordinary races and the riders they have immortalised.

Inside the Postal Bus

Author: Michael Barry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781931382618
Category : Bicycle racing
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
It's the toughest job in sports, riding for Lance Armstrong in pursuit of a Tour de France victory. But as Michael Barry demonstrates, it is also the most rewarding. He shares his firsthand knowledge of the sport and the personalities of his team.