Archive
Stories from the Flèche Wallonne Femmes
Hitec before the Flèche Wallonne – Sarah Connolly
I was so incredibly lucky to spend the 2013 women’s Flèche Wallonne with the fantastic Hitec Products UCK. I’ve got some stories and galleries of photos about my adventures on Podium Café – part 1 is all about the race preparations, and part 2 is about seeing the race from the team car, and the post-race experience. You can also see more of my photos on flickr, and listen to Dan and me talk about it on our podcast.
For other people’s views of the race, Jane Aubrey reported on it for Cyclingnews and CJ Farquharson has a race report and photos on her womenscycling.net, and more photos on CJFoto and on Cyclingnews. There are team reports from ORICA-AIS, Argos-Shimano, a blog by Loren Rowney on the Specialized-lululemon site, a blog by Ashleigh Moolman on her first World Cup podium, and a blog about his first time at a women’s pro race from the head of Wiggle, Humphrey Cobbold.
And of course, there are videos – here are all the ones I’ve found so far. I’ll be posting interviews with Hitec riders next week – keep an eye out on the Podium Café women’s section. Massive, huge, enormous thanks to Karl Lima, Hitec’s manager, for organising such an amazing time – I loved every moment, and appreciate it totally!
Edit! Here are the first interviews – with Hitec’s Elisa Longo Borghini and Lotto-Belisol‘s Ashleigh Moolman, after the podium results – on Podium Café here. And here’s my interview with Rachel Neylan, on the race, and triumphing over adversity to win silver at Worlds.
Edit again! And my interview with Cecilie Gotaas Johnsen
Podcast Episode 25 – Interview with an Amber
Holy shit you guys, it’s Amber Pierce! Sarah and I are thrilled to be able to bring you our first ever interview and even more thrilled to have been able to con Amber out of a bunch of time so we get to have a great chat with the inventor of #ClickThruThurs.
Seriously, Amber’s all around great and we had a great time talking to her. This is totally worth the listen. Among other things Amber gives us a very honest glimpse of life as a pro cyclist, and tells us some of the lessons she has learned. She has a lot of wisdom for all of us. Also she admits she would make out with Pat McQuaid (true!).
We had a huge amount of fun recording this podcast and I’m sure you’ll love it. Actually it was so much fun that it carried on after the recording. At one point in the podcast, Amber answers a question with precise scientific terminology that actually is plausible. I immediately called “bullshit” and accused Amber of just using big words that none of us understood to get away with it. My favourite moment of the day was arriving home this evening to find an email from Amber with a copy of her research paper on the topic that addresses the substance of her claim. I’ve made sure to include the link to her paper below 
Thanks again to Amber! (1:06:19MIN / 63.68MB)
You can stream the podcast by clicking here (or right-click, save-as to download).
Or grab it from iTunes over here.
This week’s links
If you think we asked all the wrong questions, and want to ask her some of your own, join Amber on her next live Q&A session, where she answers anything and everything you ask on video. The Q&A will be on Sunday 16th December (keep an eye on Amber’s twitter for the time) and you can join in at the Glacier Glove facebook page – you don’t need to sign in to fb to watch or join in! And if you can’t make that, you can always ask Amber your questions via her twitter – she’s very friendly, drop by and say hello!
