PINNING ON A NUMBER

As a cyclist, one of the first questions I get asked is: ‘Do you race?’ My stock answer is that I did a few circuit races many moons ago, but no longer. I do really need to revise that answer because putting together this Racing special has shown me how much racing I’ve actually done. In 2020, there’s far more to racing on road bikes than road racing, and far more to it than competing against others, if racing to you is about self-improvement. There are time trials, that age-old discipline, and I write about my first experience of the classic 10-mile distance on p4. There are hill climbs (p12) and gran fondos (p14): we’ve got 2019 British National Hill Climb champ Ed Laverack explaining the seductive thrill of racing up hills, fast, while I lock horns with the World Gran Fondo

Championship. Ultra-racing – covering huge distances with little rest – has a burgeoning base of devout followers and we hear from the 2019 Transcontintental Race winner Fiona Kolbinger (p18) about what it takes to come out on top in what is arguably Europe’s most prestigious ultra. We also speak to Lachlan Morton (p8), the WorldTour, road racing pro who threw himself last year into an ‘alternative calendar’ of cyclocross, gravel and bikepacking enduros, squeezed in around his day job. And if you’re not ready to commit to any of that yet, there’s always cycling’s most accessible form of racing, available 24-hours a day, seven days a week: eRacing. We reveal everything you need to know to win a race in the virtual world of Zwift (p22). Godspeed!