Le métier. The French word for it translates loosely as "the trade" or "the craft." In professional cycling, it means knowing how to ride — not just fitness, but the thousand small things that separate someone who trains from someone who belongs. How to sit in a group. When to pull through and when to sit on. How to corner on wet roads. Which wheel to follow. What to carry in your jersey pocket. How to fix a mechanical 80 kilometres from home.
The cycling internet is full of power data and training plans. What it's missing is this. The culture. The customs. The stuff you learn by showing up to group rides for three winters and watching riders who've been doing it for thirty years. That's what this pillar is about — the craft of being a cyclist, not just the science of going fast.
What We Cover
This pillar covers everything that makes cycling a sport you belong to, not just one you participate in. Group ride etiquette — the unwritten rules every club rider should know before they clip in. Bike fit — the cheapest free speed in cycling and the most ignored, built from conversations with the fitters behind Froome, Wiggins, and a generation of World Tour riders.
We cover equipment choices for amateurs — what actually matters, what's marketing, and the order to spend your money in. Race tactics — breakaways, positioning, and the strategic fundamentals most amateurs never learn. Gravel riding — the fastest-growing discipline in the sport, from setup and tyre choice to your first event.
We cover the destinations — Girona, Mallorca, the great climbs of the Alps and Pyrenees — because part of the craft is knowing the roads. And we cover the community itself: what it means to be part of a group of serious cyclists who push each other, hold each other accountable, and share the suffering and the coffee stops in equal measure.
The Roadman Position
Three principles hold across everything we publish on the craft:
Cycling is a team sport disguised as an individual one. Even if you never pin on a race number, the group ride teaches you things that solo riding never will — how to read the road, how to conserve energy in a bunch, how to communicate with your hands and your riding. The riders who improve fastest are almost always the ones embedded in a group, not training alone with a head unit.
Equipment matters less than the industry wants you to believe. A proper bike fit returns more free speed than a new wheelset. Tyre pressure and width matter more than frame material. Clothing that fits beats clothing that's aero. Spend money in the order that returns watts per pound — and that order almost never starts with the thing that looks best on Instagram.
The culture is the product. Roadman exists because cycling is hard and doing hard things with other people is better than doing them alone. The podcast, the articles, the community — they're all in service of the same idea. You don't need another training plan. You need a group of people who take the sport seriously enough to train properly and lightly enough to enjoy the coffee stop. That's le métier.
Where to Go From Here
If you're new to group riding, start with Group Ride Etiquette. The unwritten rules are not optional — break them and you'll get dropped socially long before you get dropped on the road.
If your position on the bike doesn't feel right, read The Complete Bike Fit Guide. You can do a surprising amount of this at home with a phone camera and a spirit level.
If you're looking for a group of serious cyclists who understand that the training and the culture are inseparable — weekly group calls, shared accountability, ride reports, and a community that's been built over five years and 100 million podcast downloads — the Not Done Yet community is where le métier lives.