My Tour de France One Day Ahead Blog: www.ChaqueEtape.com

Sponsor me here: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/ciarandoranbeforethetour

To all my supporters, time is moving ever closer to Le Tour One Day Ahead and 3rd July in Utrecht is now visible on my calendar as only 18 days away.

Training for Le Tour One Day Ahead as begun on the new Specialized Roubaix SL4.  As you can see from the photo it looks quite amazing; sleek black carbon frame with carbon crank set and carbon wheels. Disc brakes are standard on this model, something quite new for Road Racing bikes although they’ve been standard on off-road bikes for some time now. I’m told that one of the added benefits of the disc brakes is that they don’t wear the rim and thereby change its colour, so the nice shiny black of the carbon wheel maintains it’s sleek look even through much braking. The problem is, one of the legends of racers in the Tour de France is notoriously shouting “no brakes”! Wonder if I can manage that while descending the Col du Tourmalet from 2150metres to 650m in the valley.

Last night I cycled home from work and back in again this morning, that’s only 25 miles each way. While the bike performed wonderfully and I felt the speed especially when going up hill or getting out of the saddle, I was disappointed that the overall time wasn’t much better than my trusty alloy Trek SR steed – most likely because of the traffic.

One funny thing was that with such a light bike it is easy to weigh it down with a couple of 750ml water bottles, adding these felt like I was doubling the weight of the bike!

A big thank you to the Matt and the team at Banjo Cycles in Newbury, simply amazing and generous. We will remember to keep the publicity up for you throughout Le Tour.

Sponsor me here: https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/ciarandoranbeforethetour