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	<title>le grimpeur</title>
	<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog</link>
	<description>A cycling blog for everything climbing</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:57:39 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>The good life</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I hope you will, dear reader, indulge your author somewhat for a slightly introspective and wide-ranging post. Last month, your author turned 40, which is somewhat of a milestone in popular reckoning and traditionally a time for a pause and reflection. Aside from looking forward to racing in a new age category for the local [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/506</link>
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		<title>Romance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For me, France is a country of provincial banality, a land where patriotism flowers only to hide the bloodied earth of revolution, where history was begun at the Bastille by a horde of peasants running amok with pitchforks, decapitating their betters because they were just that. Before the Revolution, the French insist in their clipped [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/498</link>
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		<title>The commandments of winter riding</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It must assumed, dear reader, that at least one of the commandments of winter riding reads something like as follows: Thou shalt not brag about having &#8216;solved&#8217; the problem of rear tyre punctures lest one be struck down by said puncture on the first ride of the New Year. Surely there is an expression in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/494</link>
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		<title>Reading Italian cycling</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yes, sharp-eyed reader, you eyes are not deceiving you. The background to le grimpeur is now a shade of pink. This minor cosmetic change is to signify that 2012 will be the year of Italian cycling, your author&#8217;s attempt to better understand the subject (and perhaps to balance the critical perspective already offered here). With [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/484</link>
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		<title>A winter reprieve</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Blue sky has been a relatively frequent visitor to these parts recently, which is unusual given the season. This has enabled riding in a bright and clear sky, despite temperatures only just around 5 degrees C above freezing. Winter riding in the sun can be a deeply, deeply satisfying outing; but a recent ride, when [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/473</link>
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		<title>On form versus function</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The bicycle is a splendid thing. Or so says Bartolomeo Aymo in Ernest Hemingway&#8217;s book, A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway based his character on the real-life Italian racer, see more here). Many have expressed similar sentiments about the wonders of the bicycle. Indeed, contemporary writer Graeme Fife has a book-long paean to the bicycle entitled, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/450</link>
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		<title>On narratives (the interludes continue)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Thanks to the kind folks at VeloPress, your author is enjoying Geoff Drake&#8217;s sweeping new book, Team 7-Eleven, niftily subtitled: How an Unsung Band of American Cyclists Took on the World &#8211; and Won. The book is an essential history for anyone who has ever swung a leg over the top tube of a racing [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/435</link>
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		<title>On places (yet another interlude)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It has come to your author&#8217;s attention that there has been some lamenting of the absence of pictures on this blog. Naturally, with its literary pretensions, this absence has been largely deliberate as its preference is for long passages of text where one single image would do. But that&#8217;s not entirely true, and below you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/413</link>
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		<title>On religion, sociology and cycling (another interlude)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Like any good religious devotees, roadies have their rituals. One such ritual is the formulaic way in which training is discussed. These discussions typically take place when greeting old acquaintances at races, notably in the springtime when racing resumes and winter training results are in the minds of many. A typical discussion might begin with [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/398</link>
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		<title>On fall (a short interlude)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The English writer George Eliot lived just long enough to witness the invention of the bicycle, at least its early manifestations as a velocipede, variously invented and improved in France and in England from the late 1860s. Whether she had any interest in cycling is perhaps up for debate, but she was a fan of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://le-grimpeur.net/blog/archives/393</link>
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