Velominati Super Prestige:
Giro D'Italia 2013
Velominati Community Profile Archive

Velominatus: graham d.m.

Order: Gray Order Velominatus

Location: New Hampshire

@graham d.m.'s activity:

Velominati Super Prestige: Giro d’Italia 2013, Stage 10

Day 5 of the Six Days of the Giro continues with an impromptu VSP event.Lets have a look at where we are in the 2013 Giro. Wiggins must have spent time training in Luxembourg because he’s been descending like a Schleck when things get dodgy before disappearing into the team van to have a cry about it. Hesjedal has put in some good moves and...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Gesink 2. Santambrogio 3. Intxausti 4. Cadel 5. Nibali »

Velominati Super Prestige: Giro D’Italia 2013

Twiggo is dreaming of a Giro-Tour double. He has sent out mixed messages about his Tour ambitions. Will he use the Giro as the ultimate Tour preparation or will be burn all his matches in May and hope he can find another pack for July? He has abandoned his successful 2012 Tour run-up strategy of winning every stage race he entered the previous spri...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. It will likely end, and it is quite early, but love pulling on the VSP pink jersey even for a second or so. Hooray for the interwebz! »

The Bikes

The Bike. It is the central tool in pursuit of our craft. A Velominatus meticulously maintains their bicycles and adorns them with the essential, yet minimal, accoutrement. The Rules specify the principles of good taste in configuration and setup of our machines, but within those principles lies almost infinite room for personal taste.It seems in s...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. @scaler911  awesome, mate! Loved seeing the progress. »

Velominati Super Prestige: Giro D’Italia 2013

Twiggo is dreaming of a Giro-Tour double. He has sent out mixed messages about his Tour ambitions. Will he use the Giro as the ultimate Tour preparation or will be burn all his matches in May and hope he can find another pack for July? He has abandoned his successful 2012 Tour run-up strategy of winning every stage race he entered the previous spri...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Wiggins 2. Nibali 3. Intxausti 4. Hesjedal 5. Gesink »

The Bikes

The Bike. It is the central tool in pursuit of our craft. A Velominatus meticulously maintains their bicycles and adorns them with the essential, yet minimal, accoutrement. The Rules specify the principles of good taste in configuration and setup of our machines, but within those principles lies almost infinite room for personal taste.It seems in s...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. As far as di2 goes, can you just slap it on a standard frame or are there special mods that’d have to be done? »

  2. Throw my hat in the ring with the CAAD love. I have a CAAD 10 105, really likey. There are certainly nicer (fancier) bikes, but the dollar to performance ratio seems hard to beat in my opinion. I guess I feel the same about the 105 gear, alot of function … »

Velominati Super Prestige: Luik-Bastenaken-Luik 2013

There is something to love about a race that makes a deviation to its route for the simple joy of sending a fleet of professional riders up a fiendishly steep and narrow ramp. The Cote du Stockeu offers zero benefit to the route from a logistical standpoint – in fact, all it does is complicate things. On the way down from the Cote de Wanne &#...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. valverde 2. nibali 3. dan martin 4. gilbert 5. j rodriguez »

Velominati Super Prestige: Amstel Gold 2013

Yes it is a race named after a barely drinkable Dutch beer. I have enjoyed Amstel beer, brought to our table by a nice waitress, sitting outside in the Dutch spring. Atmosphere is everything. Do the Dutch brew awesome beer? I drank some good stuff in Amsterdam last spring but I’m pretty sure it was Belgian.Now we begin the Ardennes three race...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. sagan 2. gilbert 3. gerrans 4. valverde 5. j rodriguez »

Velominati Super Prestige: Paris-Roubaix 2013

It looks so easy on the television. Well, no, actually it looks pretty bloody hard. We think we have some understanding of how they suffer, how their bodies can take the continual beating. But we don’t really know. Not even by riding these abominations they call roads twice in the space of a few days can we understand the scale of the thing...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. Change of heart…… VSP PICKS: 1. Faboo 2. Chavanel 3. Roelandts 4. Phinney 5. Stannard »

  2. VSP PICKS: 1. Faboo 2. Thor 3. Degenkolb 4. Phinney 5. Stannard »

Velominati Super Prestige: Trofeo Alfredo Binda 2013

This is the second round of the Women’s World Cup, the first being the Ronde van Drenthe. Laveno Mombello to Cittiglio, 120 km of racing in Italy. It is a very worthy course and we know who will be wearing the number 1 on her jersey. Enough already, I like Ms Vos as much as the next person but someone has to work her over on the climbs and ri...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Bronzini 2. Antoshina 3. De Vries 4. Vos 5. Becker »

Velominati Super Prestige: Gent-Wevelgem 2013

Gent (Deinze)-Wevelgem, it starts with 130 km of cruising around Belgium and Northern France followed by a flurry of bergs and then a final 38 km of  flatter riding to the inevitable sprint finish. How hard can the climbing be if Super Mario got over them? Ask the riders from KT 2012, (the ones not in the following car) and they will tell you...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Sagan 2. Faboo 3. Roelandts 4. Degenkolb 5. Paolini »

Look Pro: Éclatant de Panache

The Prophet was very clear on how best to ride an individual Time Trial; start as fast as possible and finish as fast as possible. As for the middle, his advice was to ride that as fast as possible.The same can be said of climbing; as we covered in Part I and Part II of the Sur La Plaque series, the key to climbing well is to hit the bottom as ha...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. @mouse That’s true, and I say ride what you like, mate. I’m not a high cadence guy, more of a slogger. But that being said, I’m working on foot speed/cadence and with more teeth that will be fastest (but obviously still fat and slow).  For me, if I’m g… »

  2. http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/retro-pro-bike-marco-pantanis-1998-bianchi-mega-pro-xl-24877/ I enjoyed looking into the details Pantani’s bike, especially his measurements. Note on the discussion of cranksets Pantani rode a 54/44! »

Velominati Super Prestige: Milan-Sanremo 2013

Finally, we have Milan-Sanremo. I hope pedale.forcetta is ready to shoot some pictures, especially black and white because it will be cold and possibly wet. Throw in a little wind and a race of this distance will weed out the less hardy. Recently, but not too recently, this race would be won out of a decent size field sprint. And yet, besides Fabs...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Sagan 2. Faboo 3. Gilbert 4. Nibali 5. Goss »

Look Pro: Éclatant de Panache

The Prophet was very clear on how best to ride an individual Time Trial; start as fast as possible and finish as fast as possible. As for the middle, his advice was to ride that as fast as possible.The same can be said of climbing; as we covered in Part I and Part II of the Sur La Plaque series, the key to climbing well is to hit the bottom as ha...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. @paolo Flemish Compact // A 53×39 Chainset. Training in winter on your usual hardman chainset of 56×42 is bad for your knees. Changing to a Flemish Compact during VVinter will help spare them. Or, as Museeuw said, “I don’t like the 50T on compacts. It i… »

  2. @mouse I agee, Mouse, it’s not a manhood thing, simply:  more teeth= more faster= more better.  I was searching for a compact as an answer to my fatness and that is a ball check situation. »

  3. Crap, Frank…..it’s a great article, man.  I’m convicted because I sheepishly was shopping for compact crank recently.   This article was timely, loved ”pain and climbing are inseperable”.   I thusly confess my sin, will keep the standard crank, HTFU and… »

Passista

My first article on Velominati was to introduce one of my favorite cyclists, Eros Poli. I refered to him as a domestique on the Mercatone-Uno team. This faux pas was properly pointed out much later by @KaffeineKeiser, a commenter who suddenly surfaced and unfortunately submerged just as quickly, like Das Boot in the Straits of Gibraltar.*I do tak...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. @VbyV That’s because he’s from New Hampshire (I’m biased by living here too). »

  2. Passista….I love it and a new term to me, thanks Gianni. For current riders, I was thinking of Lotto’s Adam Hansen…..completed all three grand tours last year (only 32nd person in cycling history), rode a long breakaway (failed to finish it off with … »

The Bikes

The Bike. It is the central tool in pursuit of our craft. A Velominatus meticulously maintains their bicycles and adorns them with the essential, yet minimal, accoutrement. The Rules specify the principles of good taste in configuration and setup of our machines, but within those principles lies almost infinite room for personal taste.It seems in s...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. @DerHoggz I’m 1.78m and ride a 52 cm Caad10, I like the geo as well.  I’ve heard of people on the interwebz (ie weightweenie.coms) ordering frame only caad10 from their shops. Don’t know for sure, though. »

Velominati Super Prestige: Ronde Van Drenthe 2013

Ok, so you guys and gals don’t miss a trick, but sometimes we do. In fact, we kind of specialize in it. @Bianchi Denti just texted me to point out, as others have done on site, that we have almost missed the next stop on the VVomen’s VSP calendar, the Ronde Van Drenthe. On International Women’s Day, of all things.All I can tell yo...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. VSP PICKS: 1. Vos 2. De Vries 3. Bronzini 4. Stevens 5. Gunnewijk »

Guest Article: Bike #2

I don’t have to tell anyone around here that @Cyclops is weird guy; most of you have already figured that out, and if you haven’t figured it out, you will soon enough. But weird doesn’t have any negative meaning, if you ask me. In fact, I’d say we’re all weird which makes normal more suspect. Several years ago, long be...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. “But then we stumble upon www.velominati.com and we are translated from darkness to light. From death to life. We are given a raison d’être. While the dream of riding in Le Tour is beyond us, we live our lives (on the bike) as if we might attain that drea… »

La Vie Velominatus: A Rule #25 Reasoned Decision

There was no clear indication that Rick’s car had actually come to a complete stop. It wasn’t that the car hadn’t stopped its forward trajectory – it had – it was just that the car hadn’t actually stopped moving. Long after the vehicle had come to rest in what could only be considered a legitimate parking spot by...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. @Deakus Wisdom! »

V-Announcements: Velominati Partner Coupons & Discounts

We interrupt our usual programming to announce a new and exciting program between Velominati and our Partners: Velominati Partner Coupons & Discounts.DeFeet has been quietly supporting Velominati almost since our inception, using Rule #5 and Rule #9 to promote their line of products which fall squarely into the Flandrian Best range of cycling...

@graham d.m.'s posts:

  1. Cheers, Keepers and DeFeet! »

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