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You know when you're getting old when 'young guys' you were with on their first race come round to retiring. At the Copenhagen Six Day 2009 we saw Danes Alex Rasmussen and Michael Mørkøv take their home Six for the first time. I was lucky enough to be working for them as their 'runner'... Let's look back to 2009 and some great memories.

It's easy to write an obituary when one of your heroes dies - probably more so if you don't know them well. There's just the legend, palmares, anecdotes and the sadness. But I knew Dimitri De Fauw, not well, but I worked at maybe half-a-dozen Six Day races where he was riding.

As the first Briton to win 3 Olympic golds at the same Games since 1908, Scotland's Chris Hoy has become a beacon for British sporting achievement. This autobiography charts his life from 7-year-old BMX fanatic, supported by a devoted dad and local cycling club, through paralysing self-doubt and a major career overhaul, to the sport's holy grail.

"RIP VDB" said the text from John Stollery, waiting for me, when I woke up; there were others too, from Dave and Stevie all expressing sadness - for all his faults, he was a hard man to dislike.

Boy Racer steps behind the scenes of the Tour de France. It unmasks the exotic, contradictory, hysterical and brutal world of professional cycling from the compellingly candid viewpoint of someone right in the thick of it.

Here at VeloVeritas, we encourage you to submit your race results and stories to us, and young Tom Copeland recently did just that.

find it hard to believe, but VeloVeritas is three years old today, and so to celebrate, I've carried out a complete overhaul of the site over the last number of months, bringing the design more up-to-date, and changing the layout to make it much easier for you to find the articles you're looking for, or discover something of interest whilst you're just browsing. Welcome to the new VeloVeritas Design! For us though, one of the biggest things is that we're now able to update the site from wherever in the world we happen to be - which means you'll be reading the same timely updates that we've always tried to deliver, but we will be much less fraught in bringing them to you!

The Edinburgh Nocturne, Scottish cycling's finest hour of the year? Or an unexciting, unprofessional procession? You may have heard about our friend Viktor, we rely on him to voice the more traditional viewpoint, shall we say.

A Dog in a Hat is the remarkable story of Joe Parkin. In 1987, Parkin left the comforts of home to become a bike racer in Belgium, the hardest place in the world to be a bike racer.

Hugh McGuire, who has died suddenly of a heart attack aged 71, was the Glasgow-born Scot who became one of the top UK cyclists in the 1960s, representing both Scotland and the British Army. He took part with the best of GB riders in the Tour of Britain / Milk Race era, winning stages - and in so doing following the wheels of a slightly older top gun, Jimmy Savile. McGuire became noticed, and in 1962 and 1963, was selected to travel behind the Iron Curtain to participate in the annual Berlin-Warsaw-Prague road race, the co-called Peace Race designed by the Soviets to bring together the world's top cyclists in reconciliation between Warsaw Pact countries and the West.

He's a part of triathlon history and has contributed back to the sport he loves in many ways. Frank Day is the inventor of PowerCranks, one of the most effective ways to improve your cycling efficiency, with dividends paid off in the form of faster cycling and running times.

It's a year since Jason MacIntyre died; just like I can remember where I was when JFK was shot, I can remember receiving the call from James McCallum as I drove through Cramond. Jason was a special rider, I loved to watch him in a time trial; to me he was poetry in motion.

Shane Sutton is a man who divides opinion; he's either a messianic coach and mentor - or a crude, sexist, bully of a man. For our part he's only ever been polite, friendly and helpful. Given the near hysteria surrounding the mention of the man's name and as part of our 'The VeloVeritas Years' series of 'look-backs'  we thought you may like to see an interview we did with him after his GB track squad's triumphs in Beijing in 2008.

In Part I on Tuesday, we learnt how recent Tour of Britain winner Marco Pinotti, one of Cadel's lieutenants at Silence-Lotto Dario Cioni, and English Pro winning in Belgium Matt Brammeier, discovered PowerCranks and how they got in with them during their first rides. Here in Part II, the Pros let us in on how they integrate the cranks into their daily routines, and how the cranks can greatly help with rehabilitation after an accident.

In a sport where Grand Tours are won or lost by mere seconds, every advantage counts. It's no secret that many top pros use PowerCranks as part of their training program, but most prefer to keep that secret. But we found three pros - Marco Pinotti, Dario Cioni, and Matt Brammeier who not only use the cranks, but were happy to talk to us about them. In today's Part I, we asked each about how they got turned on to PowerCranks, and their experiences getting started.

Jocky Allan has passed. Life is strange, sometimes. Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine, we got round to talking about cycling, and with a far away look in his eyes, he reminisced about his first bike; "my maw pushed the boat out and bought me this beautiful red racer, it had white wall tyres and white transfers on the tubes - JB Allan."

Bikes of the Tour de France, 2008: Bicycles, we love them! With the Tour well underway, we thought it would be interesting to take a first look at some of the bikes being used by the teams making the news. When we join the race next week we will of course be bringing you more bike-geek articles!

"The Escape Artist" by Matt Seaton, the critically acclaimed memoir about his obsession for cycling and how that obsession was tamed. For a time there were four bikes in Matt Seaton's life. His evenings were spent 'doing the miles' on the roads out of south London and into the hills of the North Downs and Kent Weald.

The big manufacturers always wheel out their new weaponry at the Grand Tours to catch all those eager lenses - and here's the latest TT machine from Scott, the "Plasma2"... Riccardo Riccò, the young team leader for Saunier Duval - Scott and winner of Stage 1 on Sunday, used the new bike in the opening Team Time Trial last Saturday.

It's drizzling in Kirkcaldy at 06.15, mild, damp, depressing. The 07.50 train to Edinburgh and no one speaks, not a word. I'd sooner be in the old Transit, with Terry Wogan prattling-on about sausages. The carriage rocks past the Forth Bridge approach road at 08.10 and like Talking Heads would say, the tailback is "same as it ever was". We're on our way to say goodbye to Jason MacIntyre.