Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2023 från Bicycling

STRADDLING MY FIRST HAND-ME-DOWN Schwinn, at just 12 years old, I felt like I had the entire world in front of me. My first mile-long solo ride around my neighborhood was one of the most liberating moments of my young life—for the first time, I embraced the raw sense of freedom that we cyclists know so well, that feeling that I could blast off from my home block and never turn back. Cycling was my greatest escape as a youngster. It was meditative and explorative, and I could make whatever I wanted of it. It carved out time that I could have all to myself, which was becoming sparse as my childhood waned. Riding helped me feel capable as I accomplished the silly, arbitrary goals I’d set for myself, and…

ON THE RETURN DRIVE FROM ILLINOIS, somewhere on I-80 in central Pennsylvania, Bikini Kill played loudly over the speakers. My friend Rachel lowered the volume, glanced at me, and asked, “What would you have changed about your bike setup?” Rachel knew something was stirring in my head about the previous day’s race. “My big ring,” I fired back without hesitation. That answer led to a 90-minute conversation on gearing, cadence, sprinting, and watts before our dinner stop. A few days before leaving for my summer trip to Intelligentsia Cup—10 consecutive days of races held each July in Chicagoland—I swapped out the Shimano Ultegra drivetrain on my crit bike in favor of a SRAM Force group. And from the moment I crossed the finish line of my last race 30 hours prior,…

“I usually go into things without knowing what I’m getting into,” Ayesha McGowan tells me as she dumps a pile of flour into a bowl without measuring it. “And I’m fine with that.” She is in her apartment kitchen just outside Girona, Spain, attempting to make pancakes while converting imperial measurements to metric in her head. “Close enough,” she says, eyeballing the mound. “If it was my grandma, she wouldn’t do the math.” It is fall 2022 and I have made the trek from California to Spain to spend time with a person who is one of the only African American professional women cyclists on the planet. Which is amazing when you consider that 12 years ago, she was a commuter who just liked riding her bike around and found…

It’s also a massively complicated bit of tech, with hundreds of metal pieces that form the 110 or so chain links, all of which are in constant motion articulating around the drivetrain’s gears. With that much metal-on-metal contact, chains can wear quickly, sometimes needing replacement several times a year. Most bike mechanics estimate that you should replace your chain every 2,000 to 3,000 miles. But depending on your riding conditions and lubricant of choice, your replacement interval can be as short as 600 miles or more than 10,000. If you miss that critical service interval for your chain (defined as 0.5mm of chain wear), it could lead to your cassette and chainrings requiring replacement—this can increase your repair bill from just the price of a chain to (potentially) quadruple that…

WET If you ride off-road, you should stay far away from wet lubes because these lubes attract dust, dirt, and other contamination. This leads to wear and can get costly fast. Generally, wet lube refers to the type of lubricants that tend to be a thicker oil (like NixFrixShun or Silca Synergetic). Wet lube does not mean it’s a lube marketed for wet-weather riding. Wet lubes are very good in certain situations, particularly in high-mileage applications, where they stay in place better than dry or wax lubricants. Wet lubes perform well in harsh, wet conditions because they are more resistant to being flushed out of the chain. It’s better to have lube on your chain (even if contaminated) in these conditions versus having no lube. DRY Rock “N” Roll Gold…

THE LAST TWO EDITIONS OF THE MEN’S Tour de France were among the three fastest. Jonas Vingegaard won his second Tour this past summer with a blistering average speed of 41.408 km/h (over a 3,405 km distance). His win in 2022 had the fastest-ever speed, recorded at 42.102 km/h (over 3,350 km). Any guesses when the third-fastest average speed was? I’ll save you the suspense: It was in 2005, and the winner averaged 41.654 km/h (for 3,550 km). That year’s top-10 results saw three racers disqualified, and the race officially had no winner. As a tech writer at Bicycling, I know full well that the equipment used by professional riders is simply faster now than it was 18 years ago. It’s not only frames and wheels that are more aerodynamic;…

DEAR YOUNGER ME: It’s been about five years since we’ve last taken a breather. Though we are always in conversation, the last time we made it a point to deliberately try to take stock of where we are—current me and past me—we were in our 20s, filled with an infinite amount of gleaming hope. Back then, it was just one speed, with a fixation on hunting for all the momentum possible. As horns blazed riding down 5th Ave., split-second decisions were the only choices worth investing in. Going fast without a care in the world was my way, and the only way I needed. Now that I’m in my 30s, I find myself in a moment to sit myself down and take a well-deserved rest, if only momentarily. Reflecting while…

This chart lists 37 chain lubes ranked in order from the current best performer in Kerin’s testing (Silca Secret Chain Blend - Hot Melt Wax) to the worst (no chain lube at all). The color-coded squares (left of the chain lube names) represent the style of lube. Once a given chain lube’s listed percentage changes to red, it signifies that the chain became worn out using that lubricant. If the red block is empty, it means testing was stopped at the previous block. Each block represents 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of testing under various conditions that help highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the many lubes in the test.…

I VISCERALLY REMEMBER MY LAST RIDE. It was a Saturday morning in April two years ago, and a buddy and I were riding to a breakfast spot a few towns over. Twenty miles tops, all of them flat. I thought I would be okay. By the time this ride happened, I could no longer remember what it felt like to ride a bike without pain. It would start within the first five, maybe ten minutes of a ride, spreading like a hot liquid from a specific spot in my low back, close to the spine. This was happening on every ride, even the easiest spin to the coffee shop. Sometimes I would tell the people I was riding with that it was happening. Sometimes I would try to hide that…

BACK THEN, I HAD TAKEN TO SOLO ROAD RIDES in the easterly direction, from Astoria out to Oyster Bay on Long Island, New York, exploring the North Shore roads that brushed up against the Long Island Sound and the fictional stories that lingered between the West and East Eggs. I was searching for a light across the water, some kind of lifeline, and motive to get out under the sun and pedal my bike. As I entered the pages of old-money family histories, I felt cocooned inside the coolness of luscious shadows, the charcoals, browns, and deep greens of tree-lined roads built for much smaller cars once upon a time. Where, today, rich men take out their convertibles for leisurely Sunday roller-coaster rides as if nothing has changed. The mansions and…

1 LET’S START AT THE VERY BEGINNING // Before you install a new chain, you should clean it! That means removing every little bit of the factory grease that chains come packaged in. This grease works well only in a clean, contamination-free environment (despite chain manufacturers’ claims). When exposed to road grit and grime, the factory grease dramatically shortens a chain’s life span. The wear rate for Shimano factory grease was almost five times that of the top five drip-on lubes and nearly 10 times that of Silca’s Hot Melt Wax treatment. If that’s not bad enough, factory grease prevents high-end lubes (especially wax-based ones) from bonding to your chain. If you apply these lubes to an uncleaned, factory-greased chain, it results in a gunky mess that’s much harder to…

Not a member? Head to bicycling.com/joinnow. WHY ZONE 2 TRAIN-ING IS ALL THE RAGE What makes zone 2 training—also referred to as the aerobic zone, conversational pace, or all-day pace—interesting is it’s one of the few training stimuli as good for health and longevity as it is for performance. Iñigo San Millán, PhD, an expert on all things zone 2, has found that while not a cure-all, adding in a protocol of zone 2–based exercise for those with certain cancers, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic diseases significantly improved their health. CYCLING IN YOUR GOLDEN YEARS While cycling in your later years can sometimes come with challenges, it’s absolutely possible to clock regular weekly hours in the saddle—and to have fun doing it. Steal these three bits of advice for…