Spares

At home, I have a few spare bits and pieces for my bike just in case something goes wrong. I have spare tubes, tyres and cables as well as a plethora of tools to cover most situations. Add a set of race wheels that I bust out for big events and I have just about covers all of the equipment that I may need. Despite this, there is still the occasional incident where I find myself stuck without an item and I can’t ride my bike until it is repaired. This puts a dent in my training schedule and is slightly more than annoying.

At Team Novo Nordisk’s U.S. service course here in Atlanta, they have a similar set up. There are a few spare tubes, tyres and cables as well as a few spare frames, wheels, groupsets, bikes, kit, saddles, trainers, cars and anything that you could possibly need during a season of hard racing. The scale of the service course is mind boggling.

If you thought that this looks like a lot of stuff, consider this: There is also a team bus, team cars, vans and truck that is also packed full of spare parts and bikes. Add to this, there is also a European service course in Italy that contains pretty much the same equipment and spares. That is a lot of stuff.

We always have everything that we could possibly need which also means that we have no excuses!