I’m breaking my mold a little with this one; I haven’t done anything close to a book review on here before. But I got this one for Christmas and now in February I’ve long since finished it and decided that it deserved at least a big mention on SpokeRevolutions.

If you don’t know who Geraint Thomas is then, maybe this isn’t the book for you, but I’ll give you the low down anyway.  He’s from Wales as the name would suggest, came through the British Cycling academy.  Went on to win Olympic gold on the track (team pursuit) in both 2008 & 2012 and is now a road cyclist on the pro-tour with team Sky.  He’s also managed to write a really interesting and funny book too.

Rather than being a strictly chronological autobiography like many other books, this book is set out by topic.  The topics go ‘Living it’, ‘People’, ‘Doing it’, ‘Places’, ‘Feeling it’, ‘The Rules’ and finally ‘Bossing it’, with each of these topics having sub-chapters.  So for instance the ‘People’ topic has a chapter on ‘Brad’, one on ‘Cav’ and one titled ‘Fans’ and the ‘Doing it’ topic includes ‘Climbing’, ‘Cobbles’, ‘Descending’ etc.  I found this to be a really good way of laying out a book like this, it makes for a really enjoyable read and no where near as dry as some sporting autobiographies.

There are plenty of short anecdotes both from Geraint’s life and also about those he talks about; and sometimes what he says about various people seems quite surprisingly honest at times.  There are too many fun people quotes to mention but I especially liked the one about Chris Hoy “using his room at the Holiday Inn as an impromptu espresso bar” because he wanted to be sure of getting coffee the way he liked it.

The section titles ‘The Rules’ is his own take on the Velominati rules.  I liked the ‘Technology must be matched by your ability’ where he goes on to say “You might see a ten-year-old kid with a disc wheel.  You should walk over and put your foot through it.”  Among the ‘racing and training’ rules things like “Always Finish” and “Skin is waterproof” clearly come from the grit and determination required to win.

So all in all, it’s a funny and inspiring tale of everything cycle racing from the perspective of Geraint Thomas.  You can find the book on Amazon here – http://amzn.to/1PNBa0Z and I fully recommend that you do!