So what's been happening lately...

Club Corley Cycles is now underway and accepting members (no it's not like Club Tropicana, though water is free!). We're planning all sorts for our club members this year including club runs, special evenings at the shop with exclusive discounts, workshop evenings and much more. So if you're interested in joining a friendly local club get in contact with Ray in the shop or Club secretary Chris Parkes, alternatively drop us an e-mail club@philcorleycycles.co.uk . Joining fee is £40 for annual membership, but you do get a Corley Cycles jersey worth £44.99!
 

 
Specialized have got a Red Ticket Promotion going on at the moment. You can save up to £500 on selected bikes in their range! The promotion includes the most popular Allez, Hardrock and Enduro models, so whether you want to start road riding, want to get out with the kids over some slightly rough terrain or want to go on an all out mountain bike ride there's something for you. For more information on all Specialized bikes check out www.corleycycles.com or www.specialized.com.

How good has the road cycling scene been so far! Jonathon Tiernan-Locke (Endura Racing), who our team are used to seeing in Premier Calendar races flying up hills like a mountain goat, has just won the Tour of the Mediterreanean! He took two stage wins each one showing off his hill climbing prowess. Beating off stiff competition including the likes of Stefano Garzelli (former winner of the Giro d'Italia), Daniel Navarro (who rode in support of Alberto Contador in both 2010 and 2011 Tour de France), Nocentini (spent 8 days in the yellow jersey in the 2009 Tour de France) and many others. If he doesn't get snapped up by another team the most likely race our team will face up against him will be The Tour of Doon Hame at Easter.

As well as JTL's achievements there has been stage wins by Mark Cavendish in the Tour of Qatar, showing off his World Champs jersey in style, even if he did have a bit of a tumble on the last stage (oops). I'm very happy to see Boonen back to his former self, the classics will be good this year! And speaking of good classics Ian Stannard is showing excellent form, coming 10th in a stage of the Tour of Qatar, a wise person would put a bet on him for a classic win this year!

 
There are still limited sale items left after our winter sale. With the on off weather we seem to be experiencing it may be a great time to grab a bargain. We've got Assos winter clothing at fantastic prices including this Assos Fugu Jacket:

RRP £399.99 Sale Price £259

 
We do have other items with amazing discounts so you can always come into store and check them out. The new website gets items added to it daily and you can buy online so keep checking that out too!

And finally we've started late night opening on Friday! Opening hours Friday are now 9:30am - 8pm, so if you finish at 6pm in the week you'll still be able to come down and get that pair of mitts, bar tape or even that new bike you've been looking at. With a mechanic also available until 8pm you'll be able to book your bike in or get helpful advice.

We've had a couple of sets of the new Shimano Ultegra Di2 come in to store so far, but today we received our Ultegra Di2 test bike! Yes it is garish, but it's not meant to show the bike off, it's meant to show off the great Shimano electronic shifting and that it definitely does! This bit of kit retails for approx. £1600 (you can get it from Corley Cycles for £1280) , which we believe will bring electronic gear shifting to a much wider audience.

With buttery smooth shifting that's also intelligent it's hard to see why electronic wont soon be the norm. It's worth it for the ever so satisfying robotic noises made by the front derailleur alone! The differences between the Ultegra Di2 and the Dura-Ace Di2 are very slight; Dura-Ace uses a 4 cable system where Ultegra uses 2 which makes the Dura-Ace version slightly quicker and the motor for the front mech is slightly bigger on the Ultegra version.

So, thinking about trying out the new standard in shifting? Come down and take it for a spin!

What else have we had in this week... Oh yes these beautiful Mavic Cosmic Carbone 80 tubular wheels!

This is Mavic's deepest rim yet and it looks stunning. With the "subtle" decals previously seen on the Mavic Ultimate wheelset you could be mistaken for first thinking "that's not very bling"... But you'd be oh so wrong...

They come with Mavic's own brand of tubulars (Yksion Griplink for the front, Yksion Powerlink for the rear), which have had some good feedback from our own team riders. These wheels have already been tested and recommended by the pros - Mavic wheels are used by Garmin, Liquigas and Omega Pharma Lotto.

Expect to see the Team Corley Cycles riders fighting over these in 2012!

Yours in sport,

Sarah

As usual the cyclocross riders were out in force last weekend (11th Dec). There was a great field at the National Trophy event in Bradford where our Jamie Newall competed in the senior event and Greg Simcock competed in the veteran event. As is always the case at the Bradford Peel Park 'cross race there was mud aplenty!

If you want a laugh watching a few of the spills you can see them here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rT0kNL-wV0I

Jamie managed 19th which considering the amount of mud and the field he was up against, I think was pretty good. Greg took 5th just ahead of Chris Young, who was topping the National Rankings! So very well done Gregory! (If you do watch the video you'll see Greg going over the handlebars at just after the minute mark)

Whilst all that mud was flying oop North, Nick Jones was taking overall victory in the Central Cyclocross League! He's managed 6 wins and 2 second places in the league where the best 6 results count towards the overall. Nick beat off stiff competition from Paul Robertson of sportstest.co.uk.

So all in all another great weekend of cyclocross action for the Team Corley Cycles riders! Well done all!

Your in sport,

Sarah

So there was some very shiny, very expensive cars going up and down the city centre on Saturday. As I and my colleagues had to work we didn't get the opportunity to go but hope that anyone that did make it had a great day out!

A couple of the Corley Cycles staff were due to man a stand up at CMK to help promote ourselves, Team MK and British Cycling. Mark Webber had agreed that when he found a few minutes spare he would come up and sign a few pictures for any interested public at the stand.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the planned promotion at CMK last weekend had to be aborted. We had arranged for an easy-up to be setup on the Friday night and manned on Saturday from 7:30am. We were then informed by security on Friday night we could not do this. The Centre duty manage was called and he enforced this stance.

The small cordoned off area we were then given was totally unsuitable to do what we had planned and at 8am Saturday we had no choice but to abandon the project. So we at Corley Cycles apologise if we inconvenienced anyone and hope that everyone had a grand day watching and listening to the very fast cars.

Yours in sport,

Sarah

Well, hopefully if you're reading this we've managed to get our new website launched! 

With this new site you can take full advantage of our online shopping facilty, so if you're just that tad too far away to justify a trip to the shop you should be able to find most things you require right on here. Although we would still love to see you in the shop of course! 

We also hope you'll take the time to navigate your way around our blog posts and the forum where you'll be able to find helpful hints, cycling gossip and maybe a competition or two in the future.

So what do you think? Do you like the look of our new site? What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? You can let us know by either commenting on this blog, posting in the forum or dropping us an e-mail. We'd love to know your thoughts on what we think looks pretty good, and (she says with hope) works great.

Yours in sport,

Sarah