Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i Bicycling

IN MY NEARLY EIGHT YEARS AT BICYCLING, I’ve had some pretty spectacular opportunities—testing bikes in Spain’s Basque Country, wandering among the Tour de France team buses on the Champs-Élysées, hanging out with the likes of Eddy Merckx and Marianne Vos. // But producing impactful stories for you has been by far the greatest privilege of my tenure—features like “THE REDEMPTION OF ART IS MONROE” (page 26), which took best-selling author Kim Cross behind prison walls to report on a transformative bicycle restoration program; the unabashedly gushy, granular, and at times geeky ode to what makes the perfect road (PAGE 45), expertly wrangled by the incomparable Gloria Liu; and our annual EDITORS’ CHOICE AWARDS (page 59), in which we rhapsodize about our favorite bikes of the year. // This kind of ambitious content is possible…

KETOSIS A state where your body switches from using carbohydrates to burning fat for energy. You need to be carb-starved, generally eating less than 50 grams each day, mostly through fruits and vegetables, to achieve it. People who follow a ketogenic diet get roughly 70 percent of their calories from fat, 25 percent from protein, and 5 percent from carbs. WHO’S INTERESTED Endurance junkies love the idea because even lean athletes have significant fat stores to burn. So they could theoretically enjoy endless energy and never bonk again. People have also been attracted to it as a weight-loss strategy. THE CATCH It’s restrictive, difficult to do properly, and not proven to improve endurance—it may even hinder it. And because muscles burn glycogen (stored carbs) during high intensity efforts, some athletes…

1 CAMBER Roads are engineered to drain water, so curves are banked (generally about 2 percent). “Camber gives you the ability to lean more without losing traction, which allows you to ride at higher speeds,” says Chartier. Intersections, however, are typically flat, so you have to turn more slowly. 2 FRICTION “Friction is traction,” says Richard Byrne, founder of the San Diego–based pedal maker, Speedplay. “It’s affected by many variables—wet or dry; chip seal or asphalt. The more friction, the more you can trust your tires and push the lean.” 3 SIGHTLINE “The farther you can see, the faster you can safely ride,” says Byrne. If you’re riding on the right-hand side of the road, wide-open left turns are generally the easiest, whereas tight or blind right turns are more…

The downside of finding the perfect road is that it’s bound to haunt you for the rest of your life. Every descent will feel too short. Every rural byway will pitch up at the wrong angle. A long ribbon of pavement will be utterly blighted by the occasional pothole—or some other blemish you’d never notice if you didn’t know any better. But I know the perfect road is out there because I rode it. It was 2005 and I was on my first bike tour, solo. I was five days out of Portland on the Trans-America bike trail, somewhere between Sisters and John Day, Oregon, and had just ridden over my first mountain. After days of rain, the sun was filtering through the evergreens. The pavement sloped downhill but undulated…

I’m 55 years old now, and after two hip replacements—one of which happened only a few months ago—you can bet I’m back on my bike and fighting hard to become strong again, but where I live these days, about 20 miles from Green Bay, Wisconsin, the roads are almost uniformly flat, arranged in precise grids that German immigrants laid out in the 1800s. A really exciting ride involves the opportunity to make a slight steering adjustment once every three miles instead of every 10. Obviously, I exaggerate. But deep down I know the greatest cycling roads on the planet don’t exist where I ride. I should be depressed about this, but I’m not. A dozen years ago, when I fancied myself a bike racer, I lived in Southern Illinois, a…

LEAVING TOWN I got really into mountain biking in 2009 and started pushing myself to see how far I could take it. I reached this point where I was putting on a full-face helmet and body armor to learn how to do bigger drops and jumps—and I was stressing myself out. Then a few friends introduced me to bikepacking. It was a way for me to ride my bike off-road, in the woods, and be out for a whole weekend, without scaring myself. It alleviated my stress rather than adding to it. Now I lead a women’s bikepacking team. I love the immersive experience of bailing out of town as early as I can on a Friday and not getting back to my car until late Sunday afternoon. Riding at…

BEHIND THE PRISON, OUTSIDE THE WIRE, HUNDERS OF CAST-OFF BICYCLES LEAN IN A RAINBOW OF DISREPAIR. THERE’S A HUFFY CRUISER WITH A RUSTY CASSETTE and a Schwinn with downtube shifters. A ten-speed from the eight-track era. A Mongoose hard-tail with tires so flat they puddle in the dirt. Each week more orphaned bikes arrive in every vintage and appellation. Peugeot. Bianchi. Renyu. Schwinn. Centurion. Bridgestone. Raleigh. They’ve been outgrown, replaced, discarded, abandoned, or forgotten in the darkest, mustiest, cobwebbiest corner of some garage. Some are in a sorrier state than others. This one needs a drivetrain overhaul. That one just needs lube. As the sun rises over the tangle of bikes on this day in November 2015, their steward comes out of a dormitory. On one leg of his blue…

CENTRIPETAL FORCE When you’re riding straight, the main force you feel is gravity, says Tim Chartier, a professor of applied mathematics at North Carolina’s Davidson College. But when you enter a curve, centripetal force is introduced, pulling you toward the center of the turn. The formula for centripetal force is shown above: It increases with greater speeds (v) or tighter turns (smaller r). We lean the bike to counteract these forces and stay upright. Why leaning feels fun: “We experience force and our counter force, similar to being on a roller coaster,” says Chartier. “There’s joy in feeling the calculus.”…

Few things ruin a ride faster than seeing a sign that says: Chip Seal Operations Ahead. Yet another ribbon of smooth asphalt wrecked by pavement’s version of the old Magic Fingers vibrating hotel bed. Chip seal—also known as chip-and-seal, bituminous surface treatment, or asphaltic seal coat (which sounds like a metalcore act playing at the National Pavement Expo)—is a thin coating of liquefied asphalt covered in a layer of crushed rock, called chip. Other than DOTs, who love it because it’s cheap (as little as 20 percent of the cost of repaving, says the Ohio DOT), no one really likes chip seal. But probably no one dislikes it more than cyclists, who see so much of the stuff because it’s used most often on rural, low-traffic roads—a.k.a. the best riding…

1 King Ridge Road SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA “The King,” as the locals call it, includes more than 4,500 feet of climbing over 40 miles. Even in the summer, you’re likely to see 40-degree temperature swings as you climb west out of the Russian River Valley and then over the Coastal Range. You descend through lush redwood and fern forests to Highway 1, which is often drenched in fog. It’s utter isolation: no cars, no traffic lights, few signs of civilization.— Scot Nicol, founder of Ibis Cycles 2 The High Road to Taos Scenic Byway POJOAQUE, NEW MEXICO The topography is so diverse. It winds through the high desert into the mountains. You’ll pass Pueblo villages with brick and adobe structures; and Chimayo, which is home to a Catholic pilgrimage site.…

NOVELTY The first time you encounter something, “novelty-signaling neurons” in your brain activate and form a memory, says Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, an associate professor of neuroscience at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The second time, they don’t. Novelty also triggers the release of dopamine, which gives you a rush of pleasure. ANTICIPATION “When you travel, you expect to see new things—and often pay for the chance to do it,” says Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer, PhD. You expect a memorable experience, so you’re more likely to have one. ACHIEVEMENT If you’re traveling to ride, it usually means you’re engaging in a prospective accomplishment—a major ride or a bucket-list trip. “You train for it, you make a big deal out of it, and it sticks with you,” says Art Markman, PhD, a cognitive…

FROM GRAVEL BIKES TO ADVENTUROUS ROAD BIKES, THE PURSUIT OF VERSATILITY IS TAKING BICYCLE TECHNOLOGY TO UNPRECEDENTED PLACES—PLACES WHERE CLEARANCE FOR WIDE TIRES MATTERS AS MUCH AS AERODYNAMICS, AND DISC BRAKES ARE NO LONGER THE ENEMY OF ULTRA-LIGHT FRAME DESIGN. To select this year’s Editors’ Choice road bikes, we surveyed the entire market. Based on our experience riding the most notable bikes and component groups, deep knowledge of current and previous frames and parts, and a rigorous comparison of key factors (such as overall value and competitive models), we narrowed the list to 123 race, endurance, gravel, and aero bikes. (Our Editors’ Choice mountain bikes appear next issue.) We pitted those bikes against each other to emerge with 43 finalists. Then we brought those bikes to a staff-wide, week-long test…

Osmolality is measured in milliosmoles per kilogram of liquid. Human cells and body fluids have 275 to 295 mOsm/kg. Fluids with the same concentration are isotonic. Anything less concentrated is hypotonic; more concentrated is hypertonic. WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU Drinks with 8 percent or less carbohydrate (which rank in the isotonic or hypotonic portion of the scale, depending on the concentration) move out of the gut and into your cells quickly for the fastest hydration. Those with more than 8 percent (or hypertonic) move more slowly into the bloodstream, and you have to chase them with lots of water to get them into your system. Athletes will often use hypertonic drinks as liquid fuel, as they have higher calorie counts than isotonic or hypotonic drinks. Traditional gels are also…

GO TO ANY BIG urban park—Brooklyn’s Prospect or London’s Richmond—and you will see two groups of wiry people in synthetic fabrics: cyclists and runners. Cyclists will often be found clustered in packs, as much for conversation as wind blocking, spinning by at 20 mph. Runners more frequently exercise alone, at a fraction of the speed, earbud cords trailing from their head like some insectoid apparatus. Tempers occasionally flare when one party crosses into the territory of the other, but usually the scene hums along with the quiet energy of shared purpose As an active cyclist—more than 35,000 miles in seven years—I would regard runners, as I whizzed by, with curiosity. Their faces often seemed contorted in pain, their motions sometimes ungainly, their pace plodding. I could almost feel the blunt…

I float on suspension made from adrenaline, out of the saddle, knees and elbows flexing intuitively. My senses hum. I see everything, hear the pebbly dirt beneath my wheels, the trees creaking. I smell the wet soil under last year’s dropped leaves. I taste the grit in my mouth. There’s a faint buzzing. I go slower and feel faster and think less about my effort. I anticipate every curve, divot, and stone—how it will feel to ride over it, around it, through it. I don’t think about where I am in relation to who I’m riding with, or whether my tire will hit scree and how tiny bits of rock will embed in my skin if I go down. The way I feel when I turn onto a dirt road…

For 25 years, my job has granted me the privilege of joining and learning about lunch rides and shop rides all around the world, and it is with this context that I claim to have created in my time at BICYCLING more iconic, local go-to routes than anyone in history (a claim that admittedly has never been substantiated or challenged). I know what works. Great roads do not guarantee great local routes. A great route is a story. Sometimes it can be a song, but then you have to think about a chorus and how to return to it, and almost always there must be a bridge. A story is simpler: There is a start. Tension rises (the opening climb, the first sprint, the anticipation of a blissful sweeping downhill…