Blog - Page 21 of 28 - Carvalho Custom

Mirjam to race South Africa Ironman

We have sponsored tri kit for Mirjam Weerd, a pro triathlete from the Netherlands and she is racing the South Africa Ironman this weekend (on Sunday).

custom technical t-shirt

Here she is receiving a prize for a 25k warm up race she did a few days before, of course wearing one of our faboulous custom technical t-shirts! As with a lot of our products, our microfibre technical t-shirts are not cheap at €23.25, but that is because we use top of the range microfibre to make them and there is an enormous difference in terms of performance from one microfibre to the next. What is most important in a technical t-shirt is the wicking capacity, the silkiness (so that you can hardly feel you are wearing it) and the stretch in the fabric so that you don’t have to wear it baggy (and show off your rippling torso of course!). Our mission as a company is to provide pro quality at accessible prices, so we do not apologise if our prices are not the cheapest in Europe, even though we make the kit in one of the lowest cost countries in Europe (Portugal) and sell direct to customers without using national distributors to keep costs down.

Anyway, best of luck Mirjam on Sunday and enjoy the race….

Tour of Flanders Preview & Predictions

This Sunday, probably the most important classic of the year, the Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) takes place in the Western part of Belgium. What makes this race special is its unique combination of cobbled sections, hills and cobbled hills. The riders will have to ride 262 kilometres from Bruges to Ninove, including famous hills like the Oude Kwaremont, Steenbeekdries and Eikenberg. The final two hills, Muur van Geraardsbergen (‘the Wall’) and Bosberg are likely to be decisive.

Although the last two editions were won by Stijn Devolder, his teammate Tom Boonen (winner in 2005 and 2006) is top favourite to win. Boonen has demonstrated that he is in a good shape and for him, as well as for a lot of Belgian riders, the Ronde van Vlaanderen is the most important race of the year. Swiss Fabian Cancellara, renown cobble specialist, has developed his climbing skills over the years, and is also considered a favourite, as well as Italian Alessandro Ballan (winner in 2007).

KOPPENBERG

The beauty of the Ronde van Vlaanderen is that the shape of the race is difficult to predict, since each year something else happens. One day a rider wins after a long 40k solo, on another day a sprint of five decides the winner. The only guarantuee is of a spectacular race.

Can you beat the power of the Carvalho Custom predictions? Let us know!

Carvalho Custom Favourites:

*****
Boonen (Belgium)
****
Ballan (Italy), Cancellara (Switzerland)
***
Devolder (Belgium), Pozzato (Italy), Flecha (Spain)
**
Hoste (Belgium), Gasparotto (Italy), Nuyens (Belgium), Gilbert (Belgium)
*
Langeveld (Holland), Hincapie (USA), Armstrong (USA), Breschel (Denmark), Eisel (Austria)

By Frank Tieskens

Semi custom tri suits & tri kit

Our semi custom cycling kit has been extremely popular, so we have now added a semi-custom tri kit option. This will allow you to design a semi-custom tri suit, added the colours, text and logo you require for just a €90 design fee. Our design system allows you to design tri kit based on the male tri suit template, but you can also order semi-custom female tri suits, tri shorts and tri tops (male and female) using the same design and included in the €90 fee. We will just adapt the tri suit design you make to the other items of kit you order.

semi-custom tri suit

At the moment we have just one template option for the semi-custom tri kit, but we will be adding more. If you would like to order both cycling and triathlon kit in the same semi-custom design, then the €90 design fee will be charged twice.

Gent-Wevelgem preview & predictions

With Gent-Wevelgem, another month packed with Belgian classics, comes to an end. After the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne earlier this year, the peloton will ride from Deinze (and not Gent) to Wevelgem on Sunday after the finish of the E3 Trophy in Harelbeke on Saturday.

gent_wevelgem profile and map

This new weekend is due to the changed status of Gent-Wevelgem, a race that used to be a midweek snack, but is now one of the major Pro Tour spring classics. With the change in status came a change in route as well. The organisation has added an extra loop in the ride, which means that a couple of hills will have to be climbed twice, including the famous cobbled Kemmelberg. In total, the riders will have to swallow 219 kilometres.

After beating Tom Boonen (winner of Gent-Wevelgem in 2004) by a comfortable margin in Milan-San Remo, Oscar Freire (winner in 2008) is hot favourite for the first position. He is not riding in Harelbelke on Saturday, in order to arrive at the start in Deinze in the best shape possible. Edvald Boasson Hagen, who won in Wevelgem last year, finished Milan-San Remo in the same group as Mark Cavendish, but in a race 80 k shorter than La Primavera, he is not to be completely ignored. Cavendish himself was heavily criticised by his teammate Andre Greipel after his poor performance in the first great classic of the year and is not likely to be first past the line this weekend either. If one man is able to avoid the race from ending in a mass sprint, it’s Belgian Phillipe Gilbert. Yet, if the sprinters play their cards right and the race ends with a sprint, our dark horse is Dutch former track world champion Theo Bos.

oscar freire

In Milan-San Remo, both 1st and 2nd place finishers were in the top of our Carvalho Custom Favourites list. Will our three names Freire, Boasson Hagen and Gilbert prove to be just as good this time?

Carvalho Custom Favourites:

*****
Freire (Spain)
****
Boasson Hagen (Norway), Gilbert (Belgium)
***
Flecha (Spain), Bos (Holland), Benatti (Italy)
**
Cancellara (Switzerland), Breschel (Denmark), Farrar (USA), Haussler (Germany)
*
Ballan (Italy), Hincapie (USA), Van Avermaet (Belgium), Davis (Australia), McEwen (Australia)

Written by Frank Tieskens, Breda’s leading cycling pundit

Milan-San Remo – race preview & predictions

What better way to start your spring than sitting in front of the telly for an entire afternoon? Because tomorrow, most of the world’s best riders will start in the first major cycling classic of the season: Milan-San Remo, La Primavera.

milan san remo profile

This epic race over almost 300 kilometers features a couple of small climbs, of which the final two, the Cipressa and the Poggio di Sanremo are the most famous. Classic specialists, such as Belgian Philippe Gilbert who won both Paris-Tours and the Tour of Lombardy last year, will try to open the race on those hills, while the teams featuring the strongest sprinters will do everything they can to keep the pack together.

Due to the sheer strength of most sprinters and their teams however, the race is bound to end in a mass sprint. 24 year old Manx cyclist Mark Cavendish, who won the race last year, did not appear to be as fit as usual at the recent Tirreno-Adriatico, so this time all eyes are on Belgium’s Tom Boonen.

tom-boonen

The Quickstep rider has yet to win his first Milan-San Remo, but he has impressed many comentators by winning his first mass sprint in a long time in the Tirreno-Adriatico. His endurance skills are beyond any doubt, which led 2002 winner Mario Cipollini to tip the Belgian as top favourite. Who are we to question Super Mario?

Other contenders include two times winner Oscar Freire, and former first place finishers Alessandro Petacchi (2005), Filippo Pozzato (2006) and Fabian Cancellara (2008). Seven times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will also join the race, so prepare yourself for a wonderful day of world class cycling and let us know who you think is going to win it…

Carvalho Custom Favourites:

*****
Boonen (Belgium)
****
Freire (Spain), Boasson Hagen (Norway)
***
Cavendish (Great Britain), Hushovd (Norway), Pozzato (Italy)
**
Cancellara (Switzerland), Gilbert (Belgium), Petacchi (Italy), Farrar (USA)
*
O’Grady (Australia), Bennati (Italy), Davis (Australia), Garzelli (Italy), Hincapie (USA)

Written by Frank Tieskens

We are extremely busy!

This has been an unbelievable year for Carvalho Custom so far, for both triathlon and cycling kit. It is great to be selling kit to so many teams and it has really shown us that by making a lot of improvements to our range (in terms of a new cycling jersey fabric, improved breathability for waterproof membranes, more technical lycras, new cut for tri suits and so on) have really helped to bring in more clients – the message to us is that you want pro quality, but don’t want to pay ridiculously inflated prices for it.

With the amount of orders we have at the moment, we are having to deliver in 6 to 7 weeks, which is pretyy upsetting for us and for clients who want their kit, but we are already on 24 hour shifts and we still cannot meet demand, even though our capacity is up over 20% from last year. So I can only say sorry for those of you who would like their kit sooner, but we are delivering to deadline – it is just that the deadlines are not the 4 weeks we normally strive for at the moment.

Custom swimming costumes

We are very proud to sponsor the kit of Mirjam Weerd, one of the leading long distance triathletes in Holland. One of the added bonuses of sponsoring Dutch atheletes is that most of them are extremely attractive and here is Mirjam looking great in our custom swimming costume.

custom_swimming_costume

If you order a personalised swimming costume from us, you can print on all the fabric with no limit to colours or logos and all in sublimation printing that will never peel or fade plus the lycra is chlorine resistant. There is also optional bra support.

Mirjam is off now to do the South Africa Ironman, so we wish her all the best in that!

Custom charity cycling jerseys special offer

You can probably imagine that as a supplier of custom cycling clothing we get a lot of requests for charity cycling kit and we do provide kit for some of the biggest charity cycling rides, such as Help for Heroes Band of Brothers Bike Ride. We are very happy to help out in one way or another, but we can’t just give away kit to everyone who contacts us. But we have a plan to help out anyone thinking of doing a charity bike ride….

help for heroes cycling jerseys

You can help us to do some advertising and in return we will help with the cost of the kit. Most charity rides use our semi-custom cycling kit option, where you pay €90 for the design and can then order any item of cycling kit you like at our normal list prices (so €29.55+VAT for a jersey and €38.25+VAT for bib shorts for example, if you buy at least 10).

So the deal is, if you become a fan of our facebook page and write a message on our wall about the fact that you are going to do a charity ride and want to get some kit made, we will take one euro off the design fee for every different person who comments on your post to support your ride. So if you can get 90 people to sign up to be a fan of our page and then comment on your post, you get the design for fee and only pay for the kit you buy and the postage. The only conditions are that it has to be for a charity ride and you have to buy at least 5 jerseys.

We have some stock of Help for Heroes cycling jerseys priced at 15 euros + VAT each – please click here to buy online or contact us if you are interested.

What is the catch? No catch – you get money off your design fee and we get more people visiting our facebook page to see what we do.You can probably imagine that as a supplier of custom cycling clothing we get a lot of requests for charity cycling kit and we do provide kit for some of the biggest charity cycling rides, such as Help for Heroes Band of Brothers Bike Ride. We are very happy to help out in one way or another, but we can’t just give away kit to everyone who contacts us. But we have a plan to help out anyone thinking of doing a charity bike ride….

help for heroes cycling jerseys

What is the catch? No catch – you get money off your design fee and we get more people visiting our facebook page to see what we do.

Evolution Tri, Windsor – custom kit

We are now supplying Evolution Tri in Windsor with their club triathlon and cycling kit for the second year and they have some sharp looking kit!

The club is run by Kevin Wallace, the most motivated man in Windsor who I first met at the TCR show in London last February when there was 6 inches of snow on the ground, but he insisted on wearing shorts. Now there’s a man who likes to suffer.

evolution tri custom kit

The club has a fantastic balance between serious training from qualified coaches and having a good laugh – as well as having the added bonus of being able to feed off Kevin’s ridiculous amounts of spare energy. You can go to their site or their facebook page to find out more about them.

Cycling and triathlon female sizing

I have to say we have quite a few headaches trying to get our female sizing right – to put it bluntly, the problem is that there are a lot of shapes and sizes to cater for, so we can’t keep all our female customers happy! We have a new female cut cycling jersey, which has a more contoured fit and shortened arms than our standard jersey and we also have new non bib shorts that are more waisted and have a female specific chamois. We already have female specific custom tri suits and female tri tops, which have proven extremely popular with the girls we supply.

We strongly advise all our clients that they get some samples for sizing purposes – there is no charge for this and we only ask that you post them back to us. We have now reworked our sizing chart, which gives more detail about the female sizing.

Click Here to Download Sizing Chart
.

For skinny female cyclists, we would generally recommend that you go for the male sizing for the custom cycling jerseys and jackets, because you will probably not require the extra contouring that the female cut gives.