Bradley Wiggins: My Time

Bradley Wiggins – My Time -  at Amazon £9.00

I was reading this in Blackwells this morning. It felt like I was reading some recent newspapers as I’d heard Bradley say a lot of this stuff recently. However, it’s all pretty good and nice to have it all together. It’s not often you get to read a cycling book which is explaining the hows and wherefore’s of a British rider winning the Tour. If you love cycling, this makes a very welcome change from the rather saturated market of ‘cyclist doping confessions.’

This is not a full review because I haven’t read the whole book – just skimming through, and in the end I decided I didn’t want to part with £17 to buy the book. However, it was interesting that I ended up reading Bradley’s thoughts on winter training. He was saying that Team Sky were continually re-evaluating things and refusing to do things – just because it was the cycling convention. For example, why do the typical training of easy riding over winter? His swimming coach advocated keeping top end form throughout winter. This is very much on my mind too. It’s nice to get confirmation from a source like this.

Source: The DCMS

Also, a bit on lower cadence, power training. Another tip of Bradley’s was to work on developing leg power for his time trials. Practising intervals at 50rpm to enable him to compete with the likes of Tony Martin who was time trialling at lower cadence than Bradley was. I may incorporate this into training sometime.

The book is very focused on this year (2012) his races and thoughts on relationships with other riders, such as Mark Cavendish and Sean Yates (though not his departure).

The other bit I really enjoyed reading was reliving the Olympic time trial. After the fall out from Armstrong post August, it’s very nice to be reminded of this real sporting pinnacle – not just of the year, but of the past 10 years.

Overall

Don’t be tight like me, it’s probably worth buying. If not it will make a good Christmas present. It’s not every year, we get an Olympic champion and Tour de France winner.

• Bradley Wiggins – My Time -  at Amazon £9.00
• Bradley Wiggins  – My Time at Blackwells