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What better way to start your spring than sitting in front of the telly for an entire afternoon? Because tomorrow, most of the world’s best riders will start in the first major cycling classic of the season: Milan-San Remo, La Primavera.

This epic race over almost 300 kilometers features a couple of small climbs, of which the final two, the Cipressa and the Poggio di Sanremo are the most famous. Classic specialists, such as Belgian Philippe Gilbert who won both Paris-Tours and the Tour of Lombardy last year, will try to open the race on those hills, while the teams featuring the strongest sprinters will do everything they can to keep the pack together.

Due to the sheer strength of most sprinters and their teams however, the race is bound to end in a mass sprint. 24 year old Manx cyclist Mark Cavendish, who won the race last year, did not appear to be as fit as usual at the recent Tirreno-Adriatico, so this time all eyes are on Belgium’s Tom Boonen.

The Quickstep rider has yet to win his first Milan-San Remo, but he has impressed many comentators by winning his first mass sprint in a long time in the Tirreno-Adriatico. His endurance skills are beyond any doubt, which led 2002 winner Mario Cipollini to tip the Belgian as top favourite. Who are we to question Super Mario?

Other contenders include two times winner Oscar Freire, and former first place finishers Alessandro Petacchi (2005), Filippo Pozzato (2006) and Fabian Cancellara (2008). Seven times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will also join the race, so prepare yourself for a wonderful day of world class cycling and let us know who you think is going to win it…

Carvalho Custom Favourites:

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Boonen (Belgium)
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Freire (Spain), Boasson Hagen (Norway)
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Cavendish (Great Britain), Hushovd (Norway), Pozzato (Italy)
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Cancellara (Switzerland), Gilbert (Belgium), Petacchi (Italy), Farrar (USA)
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O’Grady (Australia), Bennati (Italy), Davis (Australia), Garzelli (Italy), Hincapie (USA)

Written by Frank Tieskens

This has been an unbelievable year for Carvalho Custom so far, for both triathlon and cycling kit. It is great to be selling kit to so many teams and it has really shown us that by making a lot of improvements to our range (in terms of a new cycling jersey fabric, improved breathability for waterproof membranes, more technical lycras, new cut for tri suits and so on) have really helped to bring in more clients – the message to us is that you want pro quality, but don’t want to pay ridiculously inflated prices for it.

With the amount of orders we have at the moment, we are having to deliver in 6 to 7 weeks, which is pretyy upsetting for us and for clients who want their kit, but we are already on 24 hour shifts and we still cannot meet demand, even though our capacity is up over 20% from last year. So I can only say sorry for those of you who would like their kit sooner, but we are delivering to deadline – it is just that the deadlines are not the 4 weeks we normally strive for at the moment.

I have to say we have quite a few headaches trying to get our female sizing right – to put it bluntly, the problem is that there are a lot of shapes and sizes to cater for, so we can’t keep all our female customers happy! We have a new female cut cycling jersey, which has a more contoured fit and shortened arms than our standard jersey and we also have new non bib shorts that are more waisted and have a female specific chamois. We already have female specific custom tri suits and female tri tops, which have proven extremely popular with the girls we supply.

We strongly advise all our clients that they get some samples for sizing purposes – there is no charge for this and we only ask that you post them back to us. We have now reworked our sizing chart, which gives more detail about the female sizing.

Click Here to Download Sizing Chart
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For skinny female cyclists, we would generally recommend that you go for the male sizing for the custom cycling jerseys and jackets, because you will probably not require the extra contouring that the female cut gives.

We have some etape places available – if you are interested, please contact Charlie. First come first served.

We have just had a new program written for us that allows you to design your own custom cycling jersey online (and bib shorts too!). With this program you can choose one of our base templates, add colours, add text, add logos and then save to your computer.

It’s not that we are lazy and don’t want to do the work ourselves (!), but rather it gives you a chance to play around to find a look that appeals to you. Once you have decided on the design you want, then you can just email it in to us and we will polish up any rough edges before it goes into production. The program has to be the easiest graphics program in the world to work, so get designing!

We made some fantastic looking custom cycling kit for Personal Fitness Studio in the UK – it took a long time to get the design just perfect, but that is what we are here for! This design has come out so well as they have used a small number of colours, carrying a single theme throughout the design, together with and an unfussy logo, which is always the best way to go

Personal Fitness are a London based personal training outfit, specialising in cycling. They take on beginners to experienced cyclists and will whip you into cycling shape as well as sorting out bike fitting and helping you to get all the right equipment you need (including of course their Carvalho Custom clothing!).
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We have been supplying Southdown Velo in Chichester for 5 years now with their custom cycling kit- they are a model club that has worked really hard to develop their more serious racing side with riders such as Toby Neave, winner of the Portsmouth-DHCyclesport circuit series, as well having really strong children’s, female and more ’social’ sections. We have worked really hard to develop our female range of clothing over the last few months, adding a new female chamois and new female cuts to non bib shorts and jerseys/jackets and we also supply a full range of childrens sizes.

As with a lot of good clubs, they have a very strong relationship with a local bike shop, Geared Bikes and Wear ,who sponsor the club and offer members discounts and of course they get to put their logo on the legendary Southdown Velo cycling jerseys!

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We have moved to silicone leg grippers (and indeed for all the grippers we use, for example on custom arm warmers). Silicone is great to use as it sticks better than rubberised elastic and also gives great stretchability so that it does not constrict.

For those who are not familiar with silicone, it is a band that runs along the gripper that will not slip on the skin, so preventing shorts from riding up. There are a lot of options available for silicone and one of the key factors is finding one that is durable when washed in washing machines (the cheaper ones will peel and crack). We went through an extensive test period with ours and we are confident it is the best available on the market in terms of comfort, funcationality and durability. We always welcome feedback, so if you have been wearing them, let us know what you think!

We have been supplying Wheelworx in Dublin with custom cycling and tri clothing for 3 years now – as well as being Dublin’s leading triathlon shop, they are also one of the leading tri teams in Ireland.

They are having a fantastic season and have just had a one, two in the female Triathy Olympic distance, with Aileen Morrison winning and Elena Maslova coming second. You can see Aileen above in T2 wearing our new custom female trisuit.

Elena obviously hadn’t had sufficient work out, so after the race she had a couple of Powerbars, towelled herself down and jumped back in the water to win the Sprint distance. She would probably have run the 80 kms back to Dublin after sinking a couple of pints to celebrate her victory if they hadn’t bundled her into the van…..