Proification of the New York City peloton

By Ian Landau

With the 2010 race season bearing down on us, it’s time to address something that’s been bugging for me the last few years.

The creeping proification of the New York City peloton.

That’s right. Proification.

What do I mean? I will explain.

When I think back to my first days racing, in 2003, it was rare to see a power meter. There was some talk of coaches, for sure, but most people were self-coached, relying on the advice and suggestions of veteran racers to learn the ropes and improve.

Yeah, Chris Carmichael founded CTS in 2000, ushering in the concept of endurance athletes to the masses with a Yes, you too can train just like a pro campaign. In fact, in my early days, the local masters division was dominated by the now-defunct CTS team out of Connecticut.

But there was no pressure to have a coach, no sense that it was a necessary investment in getting a leg up on the competition.

The proification of training has extended to hours spent on the bike as well. There has always been a one-upmanship aspect of bike racing. Who can ride the most? Who is the hardest of the hard men?

But I feel when I started out people just didn’t train as much as they do now. There’s a sense out there that if you don’t have 15 to 20 hours to train, even as a Cat. 4, you can forget about upgrading.

I am not saying you can’t improve on fewer training hours, just that the general feeling seems to be that 15 to 20 hours is normal.

Both the Radioshack and Sky teams will embark on their maiden seasons in 2010, and each recently released their team kits for the year. While Lance Armstrong has admitted that the Radioshack jersey may need a bit of "tweaking," the Sky kit seems set. Both team kits are hideous though, and the two teams will likely be talked about throughout the year as having the ugliest get ups in the professional ranks.

The Radioshack kit is not unsaveable. If the designers would simply change the overall pattern to one that was a bit more aggressive, then the color scheme could work. Armstrong seems to favor gray as one of the primary colors, with red dominating the rest of the uniform. They would be well served to take their team bike designs and apply it to the jersey. Instead of one Radioshack logo, feature many throughout the jersey. And pick one color as the main, be it red or gray, and go with it.

Sky on the other hand is completely unsavable. The overall design is black, with a blue horizontal band emblazoned with the word Sky. Black shorts, shoes and socks complete the outfit, as well as the distinctive white Adidas stripes on the arms and legs. With a slew of ultra-white British riders on the team, they will appear to glow when wearing the black team kit the team has designed fo them. For a team with a seemingly limitless budget, Sky whiffed on their team kit design. The team cars on the other hand are pretty cool.

There have been worse team kits in the sport of cycling in the past (see Gaggioli above), but both Radioshack and Sky are rekindling the ugly uniform debate. The Radioshack jersey may change in the coming weeks into something more pleasing to the eye, but the Sky team seems doomed to be laughed at for the duration of 2010 as one of the ugliest kits in the entire peloton. As Euro style goes, the Londoners at Sky seem completely out of touch with cycling chic. There is still time until the beginning of the season, perhaps Sky will come to their senses and design a better kit in time for the Santos Tour Down Under.