Innehållsförteckning för Winter 2023 från Bicycling

A CYCLING FRIEND RECENTLY CALLED ME A roadie. Though I chuckled in the moment, under the surface, I bristled. The pejorative term, even if tongue-in-cheek, stung for the remainder of my ride and through a postride beverage. Worse: I began to question myself. “Maybe I am a roadie?” The label fits if judged solely on the surfaces on which I pedaled most of my miles over the past 12 months. I did not ride mountain bikes nearly as much as I planned to—life and poor weather got in the way. Plus, I don’t really fancy hopping into the car to drive to the trail too often. So I end up riding on the road a lot. Does that alone make me a roadie? Though some of my earliest cycling experiences…

BUDGET IS OFTEN PEOPLE’S NUMBER ONE FACTOR when choosing a bike. Sure, the $1,400 Lectric is not as nice as the $4,300 Cannondale. But both bikes can get you out of your car for daily errands or transport the kids to and from their activities. If you can only stretch your budget to afford the Lectric, it is the bike you should get. But there are compelling reasons to spend more, especially if your goal is to go car-lite or even car-free. The $800 upgrade to the Aventon gets you practical features like a dropper post and turn signals. More important, the extra money also gets you a better electronic interface, nicer touchpoints, and an upgrade to a torque sensor. The Cannondale and the Tern are $4,300, a $2,100 jump…

RIDING A BIKE CAN TRANSFORM YOU. And often, personal transformation is the first step toward creating broader change. Bicycles enable everyday people to embark on remarkable journeys. This is why these simple machines are often described as revolutionary, as they offer a combination of mobility and freedom that has transformed how we move through and experience the world. Since the 19th century, bicycles have provided individuals freedom of movement as an accessible and lower-cost alternative to the steam-engine vehicles and horse-drawn carriages of the time. By 1896, riding bikes got political when women experienced a newfound independence and self-reliance that played a big part in the emancipation movement. To this day, bikes are still shaking things up and transforming lives. But at a time when so much attention is focused…

WHEN CURRAN SWINT WALKED INTO A BARBERSHOP BACK IN 2017, he had no idea the visit would result in him riding a 10-mile loop around Philly or starting an international bike club that now boasts hundreds of members. He just wanted a haircut. But the thing was, when he sat down in his chair, he noticed that one of the other barbers, a friend, had dropped a considerable amount of weight. Riding bikes was the man’s answer to the how. For the why, he invited Swint to join him and some friends on a ride that Sunday. And so Swint threw on some Nike shorts and a tank top and borrowed his brother’s Walmart mountain bike and helmet, and hit the road. “They were kicking my butt,” says Swint about the…

KATE VERONNEAU HAS LED TWO DISTINCT ATHLETIC LIVES. In college, she played NCAA Division 1 basketball; in her twenties and thirties, she raced professionally on the road and track. “The disparity was pretty shocking,” she says. With the emergence of the WNBA, “It seemed like there was no limit to my basketball dreams.” In cycling, the opportunities for women felt paltry. “My heart broke knowing people weren’t making a livable wage,” she says. Veronneau eventually put her pro-cycling dreams to rest. But today, she’s making the dreams of other racers a reality through her role as director of women’s strategy for the virtual cycling platform Zwift. In 2021, Zwift announced a four-year title sponsorship of the eight-stage Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the first multiday women’s Tour de France…

FOR MOST, DOING A THING—ESPECIALLY AN INTIMIDATING THING—doesn’t seem possible until we see someone who looks like us, sounds like us, or is like us do it first. That’s how representation works. If you’ve never seen someone like you race bikes, you may think racing bikes isn’t for you. But sometimes, brave people who don’t see others like them doing a thing, do it anyway. And those people are heroes. Abi Robins is one of them. They are a queer, trans, and nonbinary cyclist from Austin, Texas, who did a thing and created a community for others. “Advocacy work is incredibly challenging on a lot of different levels. It’s a lot of pushing boulders up hills,” says Robins. “But it feels like there are a lot of people who are…

THIS OR THAT White Shoes Black Shoes Bibs Jersey and Shorts Slicks1 Knobbies Classics Grand Tours2 Water Drink Mix Mountains Crosswinds Wout3 VDP Morning Ride Afternoon Ride Tubes Tubeless Fix It Yourself Take It to a Shop Dogs Cats Junk Food Gels Short, Hard Efforts Long, Steady Efforts4 Uphill5 Downhill Metal Carbon GPS Wing It Training Racing Snickers Haribo Let Me Explain (1) I started riding gravel on a track bike with Gator Skins! They are absolutely not great for gravel, but their thick rubber makes them bombproof. Before I got my first road bike in 2016, I only rode a track bike—and that was the setup. Even after getting more bikes, I kept this setup on gravel for a challenge. (2) Grand Tours because alpine climbs have my heart. (3)…

COMING BACK FROM AN INJURY IS A universally challenging experience. It’s challenging physically, it’s challenging mentally, and it’s challenging emotionally. And understandably so, really—if the last time you did a thing resulted in physical pain, it makes sense that you wouldn’t be in a huge hurry to do that thing again. Perhaps not surprisingly, the popular admonition that has long been held up as the gold standard for overcoming post-injury jitters and is usually some variation of “just get back on the horse,” which encourages ignoring any feelings of fear or apprehension that are invariably going to come up en route, is actually totally counterproductive. Following this well-intentioned but misguided advice and going too hard too soon, while ignoring the mind’s reaction and role in the process, can backfire spectacularly, both…

FOR YEARS, Mia Phillips and her husband had vacationed in Crested Butte, Colorado, getting their fix of alpine views and lung-busting mountain bike rides before heading home to a hot and sticky Missouri summer. But in 2012, in the midst of a career change, Phillips got an opportunity that was hard to resist. She received a scholarship to finish her undergraduate studies at Western Colorado University, just south of the resort town, and her husband, who worked from home, was game to move. The scholarship provided a practical, adult reason for the parents of two, whose girls were mostly grown, to make the change—the youngest could finish her senior year of high school in Crested Butte. But the real motivation was the ready access to over 700 miles of singletrack, spooling…

RACHEL OLZER DOESN’T MINCE WORDS. “ARKANSAS IS NOT FRIENDLY to a lot of LGBTQ folks,” she says plainly. “When I started out saying, ‘I’m gonna build an inclusive bike event, and I’m gonna do it in Arkansas’… I don’t know that people thought that was possible.” The event in question is the Grit MTB Festival, a three-day mountain bike camp in Fayetteville, Arkansas, tailored to trans men and women, cis women, and nonbinary riders of all abilities and backgrounds. The bike camp is the brainchild of Beckie Irvin and Anna Claire Beasley, and it is also the keystone fundraiser for the nonprofit All Bikes Welcome—an organization with a mission to build more racial equity and gender diversity into cycling by providing free and low-cost outdoor programming in northwest Arkansas. In 2022,…

IN OCTOBER OF 2021, GUARINA LOPEZ, A VISUAL ARTIST AND storyteller, organized and led a prayer ride from her home in Washington, D.C., to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The ride, a 200-mile trek piecing together asphalt, gravel, and dirt roads, was set to end at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School Cemetery, honoring the roughly 190 Native American and Alaska Native children buried there. The ride took five days to complete, with cool weather from start to finish and over 50 miles of rainstorms that soaked Lopez and the accompanying riders to the bone. “A powerful day to be with the land and water while honoring the memory of these children,” she wrote in an Instagram post during the multiday ride. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first of the nearly 523 residential…

BICYCLES EVOLVE. THEY evolve when someone tries something new. If everyone had said “good enough” in 1820, we’d all be riding boneshakers today. Those early bikes weren’t good enough for some, and they tried to better it. Some of those ideas worked, but many did not. Two-hundred years of ideas, failures, and successes turned the boneshaker into the bicycles we ride today. Bikes continue evolving, and people are still trying to improve them. Of course, bicycles are also a business, and businesses need to sell stuff. While a lucky few can successfully sell the same product for years and years—the 1898 debut of the Brooks B17 saddle comes to mind—most are compelled to continually evolve their products to (hopefully) capture customers’ money. Today, it is difficult to peel apart the…

AS THE DARK MEDITERRANEAN CRASHES OUTSIDE HIS Total Energies team’s Spanish hotel, Peter Sagan sits back and sips a cup of tea. There are crow’s feet around his smiling blue eyes. The end is near and he knows it. On his final winter training camp, mornings are spent drinking espresso-machine coffees in cardboard cups before shaking his sculpted calves and riding off into the horizon. In the evenings, he shoots pool and the breeze with his teammates. Clad in his navy team-issue polo shirt, he might look the same as them from a distance, but everyone knows Sagan is different. In a rocky period for professional road cycling—when doping scandals sullied the sport’s reputation—Sagan was the entertaining figurehead who breathed life into it. He is a genre jumper: an excellent sprinter,…

WHEN BEN FREDERICK MOVED TO WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS IN 2015, he had the singular mission of seeing how far he could go as a professional cyclocross racer. “It was supposed to be my breakout season,” he recalls now from his new home in San Francisco. But the following year, a seemingly minor crash changed everything. During a training ride on the local ’cross course, he fell while riding a sandpit and hit his head. Frederick stood up thinking he was fine, and continued his intervals. “Over the next 10 minutes, it got bad,” he says, recalling how he started to feel dizzy and nauseous. A friend picked him up and took him home. The symptoms persisted, stretching into weeks: His head ached, he struggled to read, he felt off-balance, and he had…

“We want to be the program that can bring an 8-year-old into track racing and take them all the way to the Olympics.” UNBEKNOWNST TO MANY NEW YORKERS, AMID THE UNDERGROWTH of Kissena Park in Flushing, Queens, lies a 400-meter velodrome. Built by Robert Moses in 1962, it was the site of the 1964 Olympic Trials. Today it’s a little rough around the edges and in perpetual need of repair, like the city itself. But it’s the cherished home of a small yet dynamic racing scene, as well as the Star Track Youth Cycling Program—a developmental program that has been nurturing new generations of racers and riders for going on 20 years. The program was founded in 2004 by the late Dierdre Murphy Bader, a NYC bike racer who rode for Ireland…

MEG FISHER IS A PHYSICAL THERAPIST, A COACH, AND A MOTIVATIONAL speaker. She’s also an incredible athlete. Fisher has earned Paralympic gold, silver, and bronze medals at the Rio and London Games, and has won 10 world championship titles. But perhaps more than anything, she’s an absolute champion of everyone finding an appreciation for their body, outdoor adventure, and enjoying life. In 2002, when Fisher was a 19-year-old college student, she was involved in a car crash that killed her best friend and left her critically injured. She underwent brain surgery and spent a week in a coma and on a ventilator. Her left foot was amputated and doctors said she would never walk again. But Fisher, a talented NCAA Division 1 tennis player, was determined to see for herself what…

WHEN BRANDS TOUT their internal routing, they typically bring up two advantages. The first is aerodynamics. A bike’s front end—where exposed hoses reside—is critical when calculating its overall aerodynamic performance. Removing the hoses, housing, and wires from the front of a bicycle has a noticeable impact on its aero profile. “Having no exposed round housing or hose saves between one and two watts at 45 km/h,” Trek’s bike marketing coordinator Jake Glahn told me. A Pinarello representative said, “We calculated a gain of approximately five watts at 40 km/h.” On the surface, “one to two watts” at a high speed may not seem all that big. But if you’re involved in bicycle development and trying to improve your products, these watts are relatively low-hanging fruit. That fruit is doubly tempting to…

INTEGRATION IS HERE to stay: I can’t see brands pulling back. And I expect the future holds even more integration and more proprietary parts. However, it’s important to note that you don’t have to buy an integrated bike. The Specialized Aethos, for example, is a wonderful carbon road bike. It’s one of the lightest production frames ever built, has a beautiful ride feel, handles great, and fits up to 32mm tires. And the Aethos has external hose routing, fits a traditional 11/8-inch threadless stem, and uses a standard handlebar. It also uses a round 27.2mm seatpost and a BSA threaded bottom bracket. Even brands like Mosaic and Moots, which recently rolled out integrated bikes, continue to offer models with external routing. Many bikes from smaller brands and craft builders continue to…