New Gears

Welcome to the new home of the Inner Ring.

I started coverage about a year ago and things have taken off to the point where I felt it needed a new home and also a bit of a redesign. Maybe you didn’t mind the old version but I have to look at this site a few times a day and thought it was time to shift gears.

Race Radio
Despite many of the headlines today, cycling is a wonderful sport. If you ride a bike then you must have had a few moments when you get voices in your head. Maybe it’s Phil Liggett, Franceso Pancani or Rodrigo Beenkens but some form of “he’s in a breakaway, he’s sprinting for the line, he’s going to take the yellow jersey, this is unbelievable” mental voice-over has livened up my rides over the years.

Well I was listening to something on my iPod the other day when it shuffled to one of the Cervélo documentaries from 2009/10. Suddenly I had Jean Paul Van Poppel’s radio coms in my head. It gave me an idea.

I really enjoyed the videos, it was compulsive viewing. At times it felt like you were right there in the hotel room or on the team bus. Now I hope the guys at Cervélo don’t mind but I took the voice of Van Poppel and the documentary’s theme music and put them together into one MP3 track :

\”inner voices\”, ft. Van Poppel

Either listen to it direct on here or right-click to save a copy and maybe put it on your MP3 player. Let me know if  you set a new five minute power record.

In the meantime, welcome to the new site. Stay tuned for more features and insider information.

29 thoughts on “New Gears”

  10. I agree change is good. And I’m happy to see it.
    On a graphic design critique note: typically it’s not good to mix fonts. Bolds, italics, etc of the same font don’t matter. But your title/heading and body fonts are mismatched. It’s just a visually distracting thing. Others may not care. You may not care. I’m a visual person though so I had to mention it.

  13. Thanks for the comments and the suggestions. I’ll check the fonts and am thinking about colours too, but with the aim of keeping it simple.

    It’s only a change of address but there is some relief that things didn’t crash during the switch.

  14. Hi all,

    I’m new to the blog.
    Thanks to Frank Schleck and Brian Nygaard for tweeting about it.
    Loving what I see so far.
    Looking forward to get involved.
    x

  17. Do you make money from your blogg? It’s THE BEST cycling blogg ever and I don’t understand how you can manage to work as well, but there is no commercials or product sellings either…so I was just wondering if you’re like superman 😛

  18. Gulte: thanks! Someone was asking the question same by email. No money but… I’m thinking of advertising although I’d want to keep this selective and discreet. If I try this, I promise the site won’t be full of adverts.

    As for work, it’s easy to combine with The Inner Ring, plus there’s cycling and a normal family life too. I’m in front of a computer a lot for my work. Posting new things on here is quick and easy and it takes my mind off the other work. But sometimes I type too fast, errors and spelling mistakes can happen…

  19. Thanks for a good answer Matt. Just curious 🙂 I’m with you on the advertising part, the blogg would be just as amazing, so I think you deserve some money from it. keep up the good work!

  23. Paul and Gulte – if I was some kind of hedge fund manager, trust me I’d be running my own team, not a blog. After all we’ve seen Mark Holowesko do just that with Slipstream and their development team. Instead, I’m manager… of my laptop. My last hedging strategy involved a garden tool made by Bosch. I think I mentioned something to Paul once but he is extrapolating a little to far 😉

    Baruch: thanks! One guy did email me today to say he actually broke his five minute power record! Maybe this was just improving form as the European season begins? Another reader is a spin instructor and said he was going to use it in his class.

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