I am cycling for a year and half so far.

Choose a bike:

As a beginner in 2020, I first chose an entry level bike at 850€ from Van Rysel (Decathlon road bike brand). It was white, equipped with Shimano Tiagra and weighting around 9,5kg without the pedals. It was a woman sized bike, adapted to women morphology especially for the saddle and the frame size. It has an aluminium frame and carbon front. It came not equipped with auto-pedals. To start road cycling, I can only recommend! In 2021, as I cycled a lot more and get a new job, I decided myself for a Canyon bike, the CANYON Ultimate CF SL 8 (2400€). I am a big fan of skating brakes, and the woman version was much more expensive and with disc brakes. So I finally chose the male version. It is equipped with Shimano Ultegra, it has a full carbon frame and an aerodynamic cockpit, with a weight of 7kg. I definitely feel the difference between the 2 bikes!

Cycling events:

NWC challenge: the mantra is “depart together, ride together, arrive together”. Not a race, but a very inclusive event, which was created to fight cancer and to donate money collected through cycling events to medical research, in Germany and in France. I attended the NWC challenge in Berlin in 2020 for a 100km ride, an in Paris in 2021 for a 208km, my biggest ride so far.

L’étape du Tour de France: I registered for this event which will happen in July 2022. It is one of the mountainous stage of Le Tour de France. It looks super tough as it is 170km and 4500m uphill in total. The event finish line is at the top of l’Alpe d’Huez. Can’t wait to train and participate in this race! I have no time or power target, I just want to finish on time and enjoy the view.