Category: Our Blog

We’ve recently had stock of our new range of Yorkshire jerseys. This year we are having them manufactured by our favourite Italian private label company who also make our Lancashire, Italia and London 24-Seven Jerseys.

Our suppliers are one of the largest cycling clothing manufacturers in Europe and sew garments for some of the biggest brands and several pro-teams. We chose them as a supplier not only because of the quality of their product, but we were able to get an audit trail so that we could see exactly where our jerseys were being produced. This enabled us to ensure that our jerseys are being produced ethically and without the use of sweatshops. We like to do this with as many of our products as we can because we feel it’s the right thing to do.

Once again like our previous Yorkshire jersey it more than tips a nod to the Molteni jersey worn by Eddy Merckx in the 1970’s.

It also has a reflective strip on the outside pocket to make you more visible. The jersey has a full length YKK zip that has a fabric cover over it to make it less obvious whilst you are wearing the jersey. The fit on the jersey is club fit rather than race fit .

Buy your Yorkshire Jersey here.

We’ve just had a delivery of Full Windsor Nutter Multi-Tools in. Like most things we sell it’s a little different (because we like different).

Featuring all the essentials for fixing your most common bike headaches. The Nutter combines all the tools you need when out riding into one simple unit. Its unique design and distinctive form turns the tool into a handle, giving you more leverage than other multi tools on the market. The tool weighs just 110g or 3.9oz.

Like one. Get yours here.

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We’ve been testing a base layer for a couple of months now and we’re pleased to be able to say that it is now in stock.

As regular visitors to this site know, we like to give as many of the products we sell some abuse before we put them up for sale.  We’ve rejected several suppliers wares because they were not up to scratch (i.e. something we would buy ourselves) because we like to think of Velotastic as somewhere we would buy from.

When it came to base layers the easy option would have been to test it in winter, say blimey that kept us warm and put it up for sale. However, from experience winter is only half the story. We wanted something we could wear not only in winter but in summer too under vintage jerseys which would stop us feeling clammy.

Having been blown away by the Sportwool fabric that Road Holland use in their jerseys we thought this would be a good starting point for material choice.

A little history lesson

Sportwool was originally developed in Australia by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO for short. They are Australia’s national science research organisation and amongst other things invented the foundation for WiFi. Being Aussies they have a vested interested in all things sheep, so they got sponsorship from the Woolmark company to study the moisture uptake properties of wool and synthetic fabrics.

As a result they came up with Sportwool.

A knitting technologist from The Woolmark Company was a member of the team, advising on integration of Sportwool’s two layers which are bound together back-to-back to form a single fabric.

The complete separation of the two component fibres on each face of the fabric ensures that a continuous layer of wool is in contact with the skin, producing an exceptional moisture management system that a 100 per cent synthetic product cannot match.

Sportwool™ manages the effects of sweating in two ways.

A few minutes after vigorous exercise starts, athletes begin to sweat. At this point the skin is dry but humidity near the skin begins to build rapidly. Because wool absorbs moisture, the inner wool layer of Sportwool™ absorbs water vapour, slowing the rise in humidity, and also delaying the appearance of liquid sweat.

Then, as liquid sweat forms on the skin, the soft, comfortable inner wool layer ‘pumps’ it to the outer synthetic fibre layer, where it spreads out and evaporates, creating a cooling effect.

 The Baltic Base

Like all our products, we like to know where they are manufactured. This enables us to sleep at night knowing that the folks who made our goods are treated fairly and the factories they work in are not impacting on the environment in an bad kind of way.

The Baltic Base is made in Europe from Scandinavian fabrics. The Sportwool blend that is used is a 25% merino 75% polyester mix. It has a fairly loose fit – we’ve tried compression type base layers before and we prefer this cut as it gives you room to breath. As we said before we’ve been using it for a couple of months now through the summer period including for the Eroica Britannia where we wore it under a 1970’s acrylic jersey and it’s become an essential piece of kit.

Get yours here.

A big thank you to everyone who came and visited our stand at the Tickhill Grand Prix.

It was a great, well organised event and chapeau to all the team behind it.

The next event we’ll have a stand at is the Grindelford Goat Sportive on 13th September. Set in the heart of the beautiful Peak District and using many of the roads we regularly ride, this event is definitely one to do.

The British Film Institute (BFI) recently made a wealth of archival and historical films on the subject of cycling available free to access online for the first time.The films are a brilliant snapshot on the history of cycling within the U.K.

A great example is Six Days in Romandie.  This film follows the fortunes of the TI Raleigh Campagnolo racing team, led by Peter Post, during the 1982 Tour of Romandie in Switzerland. 

There’s a wealth of classic films on the BFI site that are of interest to cycling fans. Loose yourself for an hour or two on their site. http://bfi.org.uk

One of the most common debates amongst cyclists is how hard a climb is and how to quantify this.

The traditional method is 4th,3rd,2nd,1st, HC catergories in which climbs which are subjectively based of the road condition, length, steepness, position in the race and what the higher powers had for lunch. Rumours are that the grading was even originally based on what gear a 2CV would use to get up the hill ! For example the last climb on stage 2 of this years Tour – the infamous 30% Jenkin Road was only a Cat 4.

This afternoon I was having a discussion on Twitter regarding the Ride London event and the severity of Box Hill. One of my cycling buddies Dan, came up with a formula related to one of the Peak’s most famous climbs – Froggatt.

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Froggatt is not a climb by alpine standards – 5.7 km and 233 m of climb or thereabouts depending on where you start and finish (which is a totally different debate), however it is regarded as Sheffield’s equivalent to the Poggio on the Milan – St Remo – the final climb before the long descent back into the city and is hotly contested by local hitters.

Climbs can be broken down into two parts – their distance and height gain, a multiple of which will give you an idea on how much you are going to suffer. The multiple for Froggatt is 5.7 x 233 = 1328.1

The F factor is a very approximate and non-scientific method of calculating how hard a climb is. It is simply the multiple for a climb based divided by Froggatt’s multiple.

Here’s some examples below (all based on Strava segments  – climbs can be longer or shorter, it depends where you start !):

Name	Length (km)	Height (m)	Multiple (L x H)	F Factor
Froggatt	5.7	233	1328.1	1.00
Curbar	1.8	182	327.6	0.25
Winnats	1.7	192	326.4	0.25
Beeley	2.6	182	473.2	0.36
Rowsley	1.1	135	148.5	0.11
Riber	1.7	158	268.6	0.20
Holme Moss	2.2	212	466.4	0.35
Box Hill	2.5	125	312.5	0.24
Hardknott	2.2	298	655.6	0.49
Beallach na Ba	9.3	627	5831.1	4.39
Galibier	17.6	1200	21120	15.90
Tourmalet	16.5	1211	19981.5	15.05
Alpe d’Huez	11.9	1031	12268.9	9.24

Obviously this very crude method does not take into account the weather, cake stops, fatigue etc, but it comes across as a more logical and mathematical approach to grading climbs than the traditional dark art. Some of the climbs listed above are a lot steeper than Froggatt, but don’t have the length, as stated above it is a combination of the two factors of length and height (in my very unscientific opinion) that add to a climbs toughness.

Update 18th August 2014

This problem of Dan’s formula got several people on Twitter thinking about how to overcome the steepness issue and how to build this into the F Factor. One of the people that started to think about this problem was another sometime riding buddy of mine – John.

Now John is a nuclear physicist so is a bit better than me at numbers as my maths ended in a big fat fail at college level. John tweaked the formula to the following:

1. Calculate the tangent of climb

2. Multiply by 100

3. Square this value

4. Multiply by length

First of all we have to work out the tangent, which as any school kid will tell you is opposite side of a triangle over the adjacent side of a triangle. However whilst we know the opposite value (it’s the height gain), we have to use Pythagoras to work out the adjacent value as the distance measurement we’ve got is the length of the climb (hypotenuse side of a triangle)  and not the horizontal distance moved.

After feeding the data into a spreadsheet the numbers come up as:

Name	Length (km)	Height (m)	Roberts Number	New F Factor
Froggatt	5.7	233	95.40	1.00
Curbar	1.8	182	185.92	1.95
Winnats	1.7	192	219.65	2.30
Beeley	2.6	182	128.03	1.34
Rowsley	1.1	135	168.22	1.76
Riber	1.7	158	148.13	1.55
Home Moss	2.2	212	206.21	2.16
Box Hill	2.5	125	62.66	0.66
Hardknott	2.2	298	411.20	4.31
Beallach na Ba	9.3	627	424.65	4.45
Galibier	17.6	1200	822.00	8.62
Tourmalet	16.5	1211	893.61	9.37
Alpe d’Huez	11.9	1031	900.00	9.43

The Roberts number is John’s formula (Roberts is John’s surname)  and as before the F factor is the climb divided by Froggatt’s Roberts number.

This seems to give a more balanced result as any Peak District rider will tell you Winnats and Rowsley are a lot more painful than Froggatt !

If nothing else this formula creates a debate and gets you thinking is a climb harder if it’s long and steady or short and sharp ?

Has your local climb got the F factor ? Do the sums and see how it adds up.

Thank you for Dan and John’s help with this post.

 

We’ve just had a new shipment of Yorkshire jerseys in. Made by Bioracer in Belgium, these jerseys have been one of our consistent best sellers since their introduction last August.

Get yours here….