Cycling Books

The book made our mountain biking trip planning very easy. It is a very useful guide to the ski resorts and what they have to offer.

This book offers a very limited look at most ski resorts in the United States that offer mountain biking. The author apparently did not visit the resorts, but only sent them a survey.

This book is pretty much a joke of a guidebook. Most of the "trails" are things like bike paths and not really mountain biking... It pretty much misses all of the great trails in Maryland

I live in DC and it's difficult to find a good ride without taking an afternoon drive. This book is really thorough and helpful, with places I wouldn't have otherwise known about and more info than I already knew about other places.

Invaluable information, even if you're not going to use the exact roads mentioned.

Use this one as the best planning source available and well worth the small investment.

My brother and I bought this book and used it to plan our biking trip in the Maritimes in 2001, but we weren't too happy with the route selection. Too many of the suggested routes were on main roads that were too busy with traffic. Bike touring is best when you get off the main roads, but this book doesn't help you find them. If you go to PEI, I do recommend that you bike on the clay roads that the book recommends. Don't follow the coastal roads--too much traffic. I like the Maritimes, in spite of this book!

There is a lot of info in this book, to flesh out, the central theme is the 1997 Tour de France, won by Scandinavian Bjarne Riijs, still active in coaching TdF teams; but includes a wide array of professional cycling information on cyclists in Mexico, the Tour of China, cyclists in Colombia & Japan for that matter; the Winner of the Tour de France Bjarne Riijs and other cyclists, such as the "Mig" Indurain (of whom the book "Champion" by this author is written about) and many others. But I am in agreement, that the writing style, at times, could be improved... I would grade it as a teacher as a "B" or "C+" because, considering the provocative nature of the subject, and the author, in fact taking it on, there is room for improvement. Parts of the book do excel.

It is not the author's fault that actually, some of this material, has not been widely reported in the United States. So,in a way, he is the first person transmitting this material to us in the USA at least.

A 160 pager, managed to find it...worth it.

A very slim book - could easily have been fleshed out with the addition of 50 pages or so which would have made it worth the money.

Readers are expected to have knowledge of the men's pro circuit - no background is given to orientate newbies to the sport.

Lots of names are dropped, but since the author doesn't focus on any one person, hard to keep interested.

I have been a cycling instructor for three years and have enjoyed learning the different techniques from different companies. This book has just endless ideas and programs to use in my classes. I especially enjoyed the section called "Cycle Sculpt" which is using the Kis Kory Bike Band with the bike. I've been using the concepts with my private clients. They just love it! Since I work at home I enjoy all the ideas to use on my stationary bike too. I never relazied there could be so much diversity on a stationary bike.

The book is pretty basic and does a great job of pushing Keiser products. If I would have glanced through it in a bookstore instead of ordering it on-line, I would have had the jist of the material in less than 3 minutes and left the book on the shelf. There not enough focus on actual workout programs (I only count 7 in the book, 2-25 min, 3-40 min, and 2-1 hour plans) and a lot more focus on weight use ON the stationary bike. The title says "complete workout programs for high-level fitness" however my light/typical workouts are about 1 hour. Since there are only 2 programs for this duration, indoor training will get very dull, very quick. In short, look elsewhere for training programs.

M. McCormick
5-time ironman finisher
cycling instructor
collegiate cyclist

I didn't think the book was all that funny. It's humor is outdated and pushes the limits of silliness sometimes. There was some entertainment, but all in all I would pass next time.

If you liked Kung Pow, you'll love this book. Or if you like this book, you'll love Kung Pow! This book is absolutely hilarious. It's great bathroom reading material. I've read it through three times now, and I'm still laughing out loud, literally. People wonder what I'm doing in there! I just tell them I'm with Mike Keefe. You should get this book, if not for what's in it, get it for the funny picture of Mike Keefe on the back. If not for that, use it for toilet paper.

I, too, am pure tifosi and really, really wanted to enjoy this. I remember my own racing days and can talk for hours on end, telling story after story: "Remember that time when..."

Michael Barry either cannot or chooses not to.

There's a pretty good description of the malaise experienced by a professional cyclist mired in a 3-week tour at the end of the book. There are momentary bright spots and little tidbits of trivia that may bring a smile. Unfortunately, the majority of the book is taken up with a spectator's view of Lance Armstrong. Mr. Barry drags us through the 2004 Tour de France from the comfort of his television set; he wasn't on the team that competed that year. And this is the core of the book.

Overall, the book has SO much potential, but Mr. Barry cannot bring it to fruition. Bike racing is fun and funny, and full of wonderful stories. This book is not. It is as dull and subdued as the colors of the racing team it follows.

Meh.

The title of this book is a little misleading for cycling fans. Like other reviewers, I really wanted to like this book. However, it just doesn't come through with the goods.

Like most riders/fans who look for good books on cycling, I eagerly looked forward to Michael Barry's take on life in the pro ranks. Barry is, of course, a world-class rider with world-class experience riding for the phenomenal Postal and Discovery bike teams. I expected Barry to come through with some fascinating insider scoop on life in the Postal bus. While Michael certainly shares some interesting anecdotes, like the importance of the expresso machine on board, I'd be less than truthful if I didn't give the reader a heads-up - this book isn't so much about Michael Barry as about Lance and the Postal efforts to win the 2004 Tour de France. To me that smacks of hopping on the Lance bandwagon in order to make some extra cash. There are plenty of books about Lance - we want to hear about the rest of the team. George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, etc. are great riders as well - tell us what they are like!

Make no mistake - this book is pretty much a collection of Barry's diary entries already published on [...], fleshed out with the aforementioned accounts of Lance and the Postal boys. (In case it sounds like I'm griping - let me point out that Barry recounts the Tour de France in quite a few chapters but didn't actually ride the 2004 Tour). There is no problem with Barry's writing - he does a nice job of capturing the atmosphere surrounding bike racing. However, whoever edited this book forgot to point out to Barry that it might be nice to have a logical transition between chapters instead of the haphazard manner in which each chapter fits together.

Basically, the book follows the US Postal Cycling Team through the 2004 season. The first few chapters were exactly what I had hoped for - background on Michael Barry, details on what the Postal Bus was(!) really like, and interesting notes on Michael's teammates. Yes, the detail was a little sparse, but there were interesting anecdotes here and there. About a third of the way in to the book we get a blow-by-blow description of Lance's heroic win in the 2004 Tour de France... There's only one problem - Barry wasn't actually on the Postal bus or team during the 2004 Tour. I wanted to read about Michael's experience - not Lance's (there are plenty of books detailing Lance's heroic antics during the Tour(s) elsewhere).

I wanted to hear what Barry does and sees on the team, not what Lance did (I've already read all that on [...]! Bottom line - this book is nothing more than a poorly edited collection of Michael Barry's Rider Diary submissions that you can read for free at [...]. I put the book down wondering if Michael didn't see this as a way to supplement his team salary for the year. Its a shame because you can see some real promise in Michael's writing. If he had stuck to writing about himself and his own experiences on the "B" team, I think it would have been a great read. Borrow a copy or just log on to Velonews for Michael's great diary entries...for free!

Okay...it's more like a 3.5 star book.

First and foremost, the fact that a professional European cyclist can write a book that is easily read is a miracle. Actually if you go to his Michael Barry's website, you can tell that he is quite intelligent.

This book actually is a very good read. One sees the day to day detail of what a procyclist is like. I particularly enjoyed the episodes that had really nothing to do with racing, but just life in general on the team. Julien DeVriese's love for the Lakers, Luc Verloo, the bus driver, being dragged by a car in the middle of the night, Roberto Heras sitting on the toilet in his pajamas drinking coffee so he wouldn't wake Barry. These are what really makes the book.

The reason I gave it only 3.5 stars is that it is at times dry. And the end tends to drag on...maybe it's like the cycling season at the end of the year. That along with the fact that if you are not into cycling, this may not be a very inspiring book, especially if one was anticipating tons of Lance stories. I enjoyed it as I am a cycling enthusiast...

Yep...3.5 stars...good book...just not great.

I truly enjoyed the way Michael Barry delivered the 'inside scoop' on what goes on inside and outside the Postal bus before, during, and after race events. The personal sacrifices these riders make in order to be a part of a professional race team were brought forth in an amusing and heart felt way.

Forget about all the negative reviews about this book!!! They are completely wrong. I can't believe those people didn't get more out of this book. First, it's called "Inside the Postal Bus". Sure it has Lance in the SUB-title, but that doesn't mean this book is "all about Lance". If that's what they wanted, they obviously can't read a title let alone a sub-title, and they should stick to books that have a hugh pictures of Lance on the cover so they don't get so confussed.

For TRUE cycling fans (and NOT the-Lance-bandwagon crew) this is one great cycling book. Michael Barry does give plenty (yes plenty) of accounts of what went on in the US Postal bus. He also gives accounts of stays in hotels, in European cities that are hubs for non-European born cyclist, and plenty of road racing. A real insider's view.

O.k., Barry didn't race in the Tour de France alongside Lance, but the title doesn't say he did. A true fan would know that there is life outside of the Tour de France and the US Postal Team has more than one rider. And such a fan would also want to know about other races and riders.

Barry gives plenty of stories about other riders (George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Dave Zabriskie, and plenty more) and also US Postal Team staff. Great stories-and well told. This is an easy to read, enjoyable book about life in and out of the US Postal bus, the glory, the pain, and the triumphs of wins both big and small. I'm glad I happened to catch Michael Barry signing copies of his book at the final stage of the inagural Tour of California.

I slogged my way through half of this book before I gave up. (My usual threshold is 50 pages) Eric & Wanda Newby cycle through Ireland in winter and are suprised/perturbed by the weather (?!!).

Mr. Newby is stangely self-centered. The book is a catalog of their travails with little comment on anyone they meet. I assume that he thought this would be humorous and entertaining, but after awhile I wanted him to shut up about himself and go home or get on with describing Ireland. When he does touch on history the descriptive passages seem to be read wholesale out of various guidebooks, which Newby acknowledges and feel like an add on instead of woven into their narrative. There are a few wonderful pages of landscape description but only enough to rate two stars and far too few to justify 298 pages.

I would not recommend this book. Instead read any of the late Thomas Flanagan's three novels about Ireland, The year of the French, The Tenants of Time or The End of the Hunt. Even Ray Bradbury's Green Shadows, White Whale (about living in Ireland while writing the screenplay for John Huston's film of Moby Dick.)

can't help but agree with another reviewer and concur that this book neither inspires nor stimulates, an unexpected experience with Eric Newby's writing. The occasional and unwelcome slide into condescension displayed might well be a reflection of the author's mood. I suspect this might have resulted from an almost unbelievably bad choice of travel timing for a book of this nature. Ireland, in winter, on a bicycle? As gloomy a metereological prospect as the literary result. Try Tony Hawkes' 'Round Ireland with a Fridge' for an infinitely more enjoyable read.

I found this book very disappointing. It is neither a travel book or a history book. Eric Newby's positive approach to life and adventure seems to be missing in this book and I found his attitude towards the people, the weather, the condition of B&B's, the roads and the food very condescending. His complaints about his bicycle sounded to me like a bad workman blaming his tools. Even if you have 21 gears you still need the skills to use them. Why oh why does he complain about the weather when he chooses to cycle around the westernmost outpost of Europe in Winter? Want a good cycling book? Then try Miles from Nowhere with a sympathetic author who gets into more serious scrapes and comes out of them with better grace and humor than the Newbys.

The author and his wife, sexagenarians both, took four tours of Ireland in one year in the 1980s, mainly by bicycle. The author has no inclination to conceal his rather acerbic personality, so you may find yourself rooting for the trucks early on. But keep reading, there's many a worthwhile nugget awaiting, and it's easy enough to discard the refuse. By page 291, when the author or his editors or the Lonely Planet reprinters get the spelling of "fuchsia" right on the fourth attempt, you will feel that anything is possible. So when the author cuts short his description of the final leg, decides not to undertake a planned trip to Northern Ireland, and leaves the book in its present rather untrim state, you're apt to feel a considerable sadness.

The maps provided by Lonely Planet add value to this edition.

Those who have given this work low scores are doing it a serious injustice. It is definitely not an example of perky, predictably upbeat travel writing, but is instead a thoughtful, moody, highly literate and contemplative treatment of a deliberately oddball adventure -- to bicycle through Ireland, at the age of 66, in the chill of winter.

It may be that those who have rated this work poorly are fans of Irish tourism who picked it up expecting it to validate their enthusiasm in a predictable way, and were blindsided when it turned out to be something completely different. But it is far above the norm for travel writing.

The author and his wife both have a great, dry sense of humor, and Newby deftly captures the character of all kinds of amusing types they come in contact with. He is known for his thoughtful travel literature -- in the New York Review of Books recently, Larry McMurty revealed that he has been re-reading one of Newby's other travelogues, 'Slowly Down the Ganges', more or less continuously since it was published in 1964.

I love the Tour (TIOOYK), and I love the tales and the tradition. This book was stream of consciousness writing, wherein the author just spews forth whatever pops into his head about any of the climbs, stages, years, riders, managers, sponsors, or towns that happen to be remotely connected (even if only in his own mind) with the subject at hand.

The pictures were few and not particularly helpful. And since they were black and white it was funny when he referred to Landis as the rider in the "green, yellow, and white strip"!

Graeme Fife's "Tour de France" is not a chronological history of the Tour. It is a series of little stories loosely woven around famous mountain passes and legendary riders, alternating with personal anecdotes of the author's own experiences in climbing the same passes.

There are some excellent passages in the book that give some glimpses into the personalities of the Tour. I was fascinated by Fife's portrayal of Henri Desgranges as both a stern and somewhat sadistic Tour director, how he shaped the Tour in its early days but also had the wisdom to bend with the times which allowed the Tour to grow into the premier event that it is today. There are gripping stories of what the early riders had to endure: attempted poisonings, poor nutrition, breaking bikes, trickery and sabotage.

Unfortunately the reader pays a price. One has to wade through some paragraphs of overly flowery writing that will make you cringe. For example, Fife writes about the Col du Glandin:

"Cloud pours over its rim, as it were from a hidden chimney serving the troll furnaces in the mountain's heart. Billows of smoke as white as steam, enough to herald a whole consistory full of new Popes. A diabolic machine stoking up ready for the engorging of the lone, the intrepid, Knight of the Campagnolo Gears advancing to meet the Dragon of the Mount Vicious in its swirls of inspissated mist."

See what I mean? Sometimes it's difficult to peer into Fife's writing, as if it is indeed obscured by swirls of inspissated mist.

Bottom line: if you can bear some overly romantic writing as well as some strong opinions, then this book may be worthwhile to get a series of unique glimpses into Tour history.

While I do not disagree with the people who find this book incomplete, perhaps unfair to Indurain, too flowery, or perhaps leaning too heavily on the author's own trips up the great climbs of the tour, I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Fife does have his own personal view of what good racing is, as anyone does, but I found it quite fun to see how tough these climbs are for the layman (he interupts his coverage of the history of the tour to bring you his own exploits on the col du telegraphe and Mont ventoux). I found the flowery language to be just a lot of fun, actually. And I found his treatment of the more ancient history of the tour to breathe life into the old photographs and old stories in a wonderful way. Perhaps this should not be your one book on cycling, but it is an excellent addition to your cycling library. You should certainly have tim krabbe's 'the rider', also, which is an absolutely fantastic book.

Despite his unfair treatment of Miguel Indurain's great career and Paul Kimmage's great book ("A Rough Ride"), this book does give the reader an interesting glimpse into the history of this great race. As others have commented, it is not comprehensive, the content being driven by the author's own passion for parts of the event's history.

Worth a read if only to help understand the origins of the drugs scandals of recent years which can be traced back to the early years of the sport.

Disappointing in it's emphasis on the authors rides of Tour routes followed by the exploits of British riders. Only then does he deal with other riders in an extremely disjointed way. Extremely opinionated view dismissing many of the great riders due to percieved personality faults or (in the case of Indurain) lack of intelligence. This does not add up to a treatment of the History of the Tour. It is more just a collection of unrelated anecdotes.

Everything you ever wanted to know about cyclocross and then more. But as a reviewer said, it is more for someone getting in the sport and lots of stuff involving equipment is outdated. But the fundamentals never change. I highly recommend the mounting and dismounting techniques because these skills will help you no matter what type of cycling you do and noone mounts and dismounts better than cyclocross racers.

Let me begin with the positive: this book does contain very basic information on basic cyclocross skills, such as dismounting and bunny hopping. However, this information is contained in about ten pages of the book. The rest is pretty useless, including info on who won the World Cyclocross Championships in the early 90s and info on outdated equipment (Spinergy Wheels, for example). Since the book is so outdated, the section on equipment is pretty useless. Equipment has changed drastically since this book was published. I recommend that you save your money and simply do an internet search to find pages demonstrating basic 'cross skills.

Although revised into a second edition, the book is still very outdated. A lot of time is spent talking about equipment, which becomes outdated quickly, and you can tell the updates were edited in rather than rewriting the whole section. The space would be better spent talking about specifics of tactics and training. The pages devoted to embrocation really dates the book. Fortunately the section on training seem fairly current, given the recent advances in training science. Still, the updates put the book in the late 90s, so it's still a decade out of date. A good overview, but it leaves probably the biggest audience - road and mountain racers who've done a few 'cross races and become hooked - disappointed.

Yes it's outdated but it's possibly the only book on Cyclocross out there you can easily find. Definitely written for someone new to the sport. Very basic but still a good resource. The training and technique part of the book are pretty biased so don't use this a a bible for the sport. As a previous review stated it's really a primer.

This is a good book on the ins and outs of cyclocross. If you really read the tips in this book, it will help a lot. But I found it's hard to just read a tip and realize when to use it in a race situation. Going back over the book, I see now things I read there, but didn't _learn_ until I'd been riding cross for a couple years.

And yes, the equipment section is horribly outdated now, but so what. Part of cyclocross is old school principles that will never change. You have to work your tail off, keep your forward momentum up, and choose lines such that you won't loose traction and crash. That will never change.

If you want a modern comprehensive equipment summary, buy Velonews in October. It's not realistic to keep this book up to date - it'd have to change every year.

Don't get carried away with the equipment. If you're reading this book, it's because you are new to cross, or just getting serious about it anyway. So focus on the core elements (mentioned above) and use this book in part as a guide.