BIKE Magazine

There is a moment every spring when cycling stops feeling like a habit and starts feeling like an event. May is that moment. As I write this, the Giro d'Italia is almost upon us, the women's calendar is already in full swing, and the mountain bike World Series has just opened its doors in South Korea. If you have been waiting for the season to properly begin, the wait is over.
This issue arrives at what I genuinely believe is the richest month in the cycling calendar. We have tried to do it justice. Our lead feature takes a long look at everything happening across May - the Giro, La Vuelta Femenina, the Scandinavian races, the British domestic scene - and the picture that emerges is one of extraordinary breadth. Road, off-road, men's, women's, grand tour, one-day. It is almost too much, which is, of course, precisely the point.
We also bring you a full report from the 4Islands Epic in Croatia, where Wout Alleman and Martin Stosek delivered a masterclass in stage-race control, and Katazina Sosna-Pinele and Giorgia Marchet produced one of the most dominant performances we have seen in women's mountain bike racing this year - five stages, five wins, not a single crack in the armour. If you missed it, read our coverage. It was a remarkable week.

On the gear front, the new Felt BREED gravel bike has turned heads, and rightly so. The numbers Felt are claiming, nearly a 23 per cent weight reduction, a 10.5 per cent drag improvement, are aggressive, and we have done our best to give you a clear picture of what they actually mean for a rider pinning on a number. We have also been to Bespoked London with Pashley, where three hand-built steel machines made a very strong case for why craftsmanship and curiosity are not mutually exclusive.
Elsewhere, we look at an EPICNIGHT ride series in Lombardy that treats cycling as culture rather than competition, and at RODA, a new mountain biking concept in the Dolomites that handles the logistics so you can just get on with riding.