Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 2 2020 i Bicycling

JESSICA McWHIRT WINNING ISN’T EVERYTHING, P.26 It’s embarrassing, but I imagine Wonder Woman—how strong and powerful she is—and say to myself, I am strong. And when repeating I am strong gets old, I count my pedal strokes: 1…2…3... plus: I make this drink my friend Jared introduced me to: 1 serving Generation UCAN Performance Energy powder, 1 serving Bio-Steel Sports Hydration Mix, and 1 serving MCT oil. I drink a bottle of it before a race for the added energy. For long rides, I double the servings. FLOYD LANDIS CBD MOGUL, P.56 I wish I’d known before I started riding how many bugs would fly into my mouth. Close your mouth more often when you’re riding so you don’t eat a bug. also: I can definitely outride an unladen African…

I’m starting to get those first fluttery intimations that I might be finding some form again, and it’s got me thinking about the last time I felt really fit on a bike. I had to look up the date—August 13, 2016—but I remember so much about that ride with so much clarity. I should tell you that as a training resource I am not much use. I haven’t formally trained for anything in almost two decades. I used to have coaches and plans and everything, but somewhere in there the demands of my life and my job got me to a place where I could not stomach the idea of a bicycle ride being another number to hit, another obligation, another performance goal. But I still loved feeling fit on a…

1/AMAZONBASICS RUBBER HEX DUMBBELLS/FROM $15 Keep a few sets of weights at home to get your strength work in—no gym required. The contoured grip of these dumbbells provides a comfortable hold while the hex shape prevents them from rolling around. 2/FITBIT VERSA 2/ $199 Track your activity and calories burned on and off the bike, as well as steps, floors climbed, sleep cycles, and more to stay one step ahead of creeping weight gain. 3/INSTANT POT DUO 6-QUART/$80 Healthy eating starts at home. The much beloved Instant Pot makes cooking lentils, beans, whole grains, and protein (even frozen!) quicker and easier. Pro tip: Rice cooked with coconut oil (1 teaspoon of oil to every half cup of rice) and refrigerated overnight has 10 times more resistant starch (and half the calories)…

THIS MIGHT BE AN UNPOPULAR OPINION, BUT I don’t love the Tour de France anymore. Not the way I once did, anyway. It’s still a great race, maybe even the greatest, and it’s certainly the only one your noncycling family and friends know anything about, even if you have to earnestly explain (again) how winning a stage is different from leading the race. My own interest in pro road racing runs highest in March and April, not July. What I’m saying is that if you love watching the Tour but find it a little…slow sometimes, give the Spring Classics a chance. This is, of course, sacrilege. The Grand Tours—Italy, France, and Spain—are brilliant, baroque spectacles. The Tour de France especially, I mean, it’s the Tour. What could possibly be better…

The way you turn the pedals directly affects the amount of power you put out. Torquing your upper body as you stomp the pedals wastes watts. These lightning-fast efforts will give you a fluid and efficient pedal stroke and cadence. Pedal as hard as you can for 10 seconds in a gear you can push 90 to 110 rpm with effort, and then spin easy for 20 seconds. Repeat for 10 to 15 minutes. Rest five minutes. Do another set. SPEED INTERVALS WARM UP 15 MINUTES ALL OUT @90–110RPM 10 SECONDS RECOVER 20 SECONDS REPEAT FOR 10–15 MIUNTES PEDAL EASY 5 MINUTES ALL OUT @90–110RPM 10 SECONDS RECOVER 20 SECONDS REPEAT FOR 10–15 MIUNTES COOL DOWN SMOOTH PEDALING POINTERS CONCENTRATE ON PEDALING fluidly in a full circle, with no stopped…

Threshold power is the maximum effort you can sustain for 60 minutes without blowing up. Raising it will help you stay with faster riders on your group ride and not get dropped. During your next ride, go as hard as you can for two to three minutes. (You will be flagging by the end.) Recover at an easy pace for two minutes. Do up to three sets. ATTACK INTERVALS WARM UP 15 MINUTES SPRINT ALL OUT 2–3 MINUTES RECOVER 2–3 MINUTES REPEAT X 2 COOL DOWN 10 MINUTES HOW TO BUILD MENTAL TOUGHNESS FOR THE HARDEST WORKOUTS THRESHOLD WORKOUTS ARE notoriously difficult. Which means that getting in the right headspace to perform these intervals to the best of your ability can be even trickier than the workout itself. As a…

FLOYD LANDIS IS UP TO HIS EYEBROWS IN CANNABIS. Actually, higher than that: Most of the plants in this one-acre patch, rich and lushly green, stand a good foot or two taller than the former pro cyclist and disqualified Tour de France winner. On this warm Thursday in mid-September, Floyd and two colleagues are making the rounds of Amish farms in southern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, checking on their crops. The plants are the same species, Cannabis sativa, that produces the marijuana people smoke to get high. But they are technically special strains of hemp bred to have low concentrations of THC—the chemical responsible for the marijuana “high”—and high concentrations of CBD or cannabidiol, the substance used in the creams, edible gummies, and tinctures sold by his brand, Floyd’s of Leadville.…

WAHOO KICKR BIKE $3,500 // The Wahoo Kickr Bike is an indoor training station that’s always ready when you are—just get on and go. As a standalone machine, it doesn’t require you to install anything but pedals, and it has five different adjustment points (standover height, saddle height, setback, reach, crank length, and stack height) so you can fully customize the fit. You can also set it up with the Wahoo Fitness app, which lets you take photos of your outdoor bike and gives you measurements with which to adjust the Kickr Bike to mirror the exact same geometry. It connects with training apps (Zwift, TrainerRoad, and others), and provides unmatched, real-feel feedback to the rider based on the virtual terrain in the program, including tilting to match climbs and…

1. FIZIK INFINITO X1 $400 WHAT IS IT: MAX POWER FOR MOUNTAIN AND GRAVEL The X1 is a no-nonsense shoe designed for high-performance mountain bike and gravel racing where every watt counts. It features a full carbon sole and dual Boa dials, and the outsole has large lugs and a little bit of reinforcement to guard against the inevitable abuse of riding in the rough. The two-Boa wire closure cinches around your foot nicely, and the break-in time is remarkably quick. The best part, however, is how well the shoe interfaces with the pedal; there’s almost no side-to-side play. Some riders may find the sole too stiff for longer days in the saddle, but it’s tailored to racers who are interested in maximum power transfer. 2. FIVE TEN FREERIDER PRO…

CRUISING ON OUR BIKES DOWN THE WINDING Catalina Highway in Tucson, Arizona, at 40 miles an hour past 15-foot-high cacti and epic mountain views, my coworker, social media editor Katie Fogel, and I exchanged incredulous smiles. We couldn’t believe this was actually work. A few weeks earlier, our boss, rider-in-chief Bill Strickland, had asked us if we wanted to take on a new assignment: Ditch the office and go on a spontaneous one-day road trip to ride somewhere awesome. He’d convinced Subaru to give us the keys to a 2020 Outback Onyx Edition XT and told us to figure out where to ride. We said, “Hell, yes!” and then left our destination decision up to you, our readers. You suggested spots in almost every region of the country, from the…

BOBBY LEA TEST EDITOR SEARCHING FOR #DADWATTS SINCE SEPTEMBER ’19 PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW 1/Cannondale Scalpel Si Hi-Mod World Cup $11,000 I just upgraded the suspension to the new Lefty Ocho fork and a Fox DPS EVOL Factory shock. I love this lightweight XC ripper. 2/Mavic Open Pro Wheelset $390 It’s tough to beat these hoops. They’re silky smooth on the road, capable of riding rough gravel, cheap and easy to maintain, and will last forever. 3/Stihl Farm Boss Chainsaw $410 I’m finally building a trail system on my farm. This saw makes quick work of the stuff that’s too big for branch clippers and my skinny biker arms. ONE RIDER WHO INSPIRES ME Cycling caught my attention in the late ’80s, and my heroes were the stars of…

IF YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, THERE’S A LOT OF new and exciting stuff happening in the world of bicycles. Gravel bikes are redefining the drop-bar experience. Off-road touring bikes, or what I like to call super-gravel bikes, are becoming extremely capable of getting us off pavement and farther into the wild. E-bikes are evolving at such an astonishing rate, it’s hard to imagine life without them. And mountain bikes, whose geometry rules are in the midst of a major rewrite, keep getting longer, lower, and slacker. In almost every category, cycling equipment is evolving as brands continue to experiment with and improve the machine we love so much. Almost every category. There’s still one kind of bike that’s been virtually locked in amber for about 20 years: the halo of our…

LINDSEY RICHTER AND PARTICIPANTS FEEL THE STOKE AT LADIES ALLRIDE CAMPS AND THE LIV GL OBAL SUMMIT IN 2019. I FELL IN LOVE WITH MOUNTAIN BIKING THE WAY lots of people fall off them—hard, fast, and inevitably. I was looking for something fulfilling that I could pour my heart into, and my corporate marketing career just wasn’t doing it. I missed my fitness and the feeling of competing and belonging to a team like I’d gotten from sports as a kid. My dad had bought me a hardtail mountain bike for transportation in college, so on a whim I dusted off the cobwebs and began racing cross-country. As I lined up with the other women at the staging area while we waited to race our hearts out, I knew: There…

IT’S NORMAL TO want to ride faster. Not only can you go farther and feel stronger, but you also enjoy the satisfaction of keeping up with speedier friends, racking up a shiny case of new personal bests, and accomplishing more on the bike than you might have expected. That progress, as you smash through your former limits and set new PRs, is profoundly transformational—and it can leave you feeling unstoppable. But pedaling at the same pace day after day just won’t get you there. Here’s what will. These high-intensity interval workouts hit the five essential pillars of cycling fitness, from honing your top-end speed to giving you the engine to ride all day. Add one or two of these quick workouts to your regular riding routine each week, and you’ll…

GARMIN FENIX 6X PRO $850 // The 6X Pro picks up where the fēnix 5 left off, adding better battery life, more customizable screens and workout profiles, and the ability to pair to ANT+ sensors in addition to Bluetooth ones. For power geeks (TrainingPeaks upload or it didn’t happen), that means you can use this watch as a substitute for your normal bike computer if you forgot to pack it or simply don’t want to use it from time to time. The watch records sleep and stress data, which you can easily access along with a bevy of other health stats in the Garmin Connect app, and you can auto-sync with a wide variety of third-party apps, including MyFitnessPal, Strava, and TrainingPeaks. The battery lasts so long that you’ll completely…

SALSA MUKLUK CARBON NX EAGLE PRICE: $3,149/WEIGHT: 28.1 LB (XL) I HAD ALWAYS thought fat bikes were an odd, niche product—great for the intended user but not for me. But a few rides on the Salsa Mukluk changed that. To understand why the Mukluk is so damn awesome for so many riders, you must first understand how it—and all production fat bikes, for that matter—came to be. Let’s start at the beginning, way back in the late ’80s, not long after the first mountain bikes arrived in shops. As far south as New Mexico and as far north as Alaska, curious riders looking for easier ways to traverse sand and snow started altering frames to accommodate the wider rims and tires they were cobbling together—first by running wheels side by…

1 Blenders Eyewear Broadway Nika Sunglasses/$48 They’re polarized to keep the glare out, even in sideways light at golden hour. They’re also surprisingly resilient when mushed inside a backpack. 2 RTIC Soft Pack 30/$100 There’s nothing better than capping off a long ride with a couple of bottles of something cold and refreshing. The Soft Pack keeps its contents cool for at least eight hours, and the waterproof zipper is leak-proof. Plus, the plush walls are easier to stuff into a car and won’t damage other cargo if you hit any bumps. 3 Yeti Hondo Base Camp Chair/$300 This lightweight chair folds down easily for quick setup and packing. It’s pricey, but it’s also designed to last season after season. And it’s got great back support, even for people six…

JENNIFER SHERRY ASSOCIATE TEST DIRECTOR THERE BETTER BE MUSIC IN HEAVEN—AND, JIC, HELL TOO PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW 1/Rokform V4 Pro-Series Bike Mount $60 I’m confident my iPhone 8 won’t end up on the ground when it’s locked into the stemmounted Rokform. 2/Küat Sherpa 2.0 $498 So easy to operate, even my 12-year-old has no excuse to not load and unload bikes. 3/Buca Boot $125 This hard-shell box attaches to your rear rack; it can be locked when closed or ridden open to reveal nylon panniers. THE BEST THING ABOUT RIDING Having the freedom to make last-minute decisions about which way to turn, and never really knowing if the other way would have been the better choice. ALVIN AND THE BUCA BOOT Alvin is a 13-pound Chihuahua who was…

CONFESSION: EARLY IN MY RIDING (AND writing) life, when people would lament that they were gaining weight despite the fact that they were still riding, training, and eating the same, I kind of didn’t believe them. I, like so many trainers at the time, believed the old saws that adults gain weight over time because they become more sedentary. Case closed. That’s just simply not true. Sure, life gets busy. Jobs, relationships, family, friends—all those obligations can put the squeeze on riding and training time. But even if you don’t change a thing, you change. You can ride, race, and train just as much, eat the same sunup to sundown, and still find your kits getting increasingly snug. Believe me, I know. And it’s not just you. In an informal…

EVEN BEFORE I SIGNED UP, I KNEW I WOULDN’T win this year’s Zwift Academy competition. This worldwide virtual riding contest would award one man and one woman—out of 68,603 participants—a spot on a pro team, based on measured performances. And sure enough, when the list of 10 women who made the semifinals was announced, I wasn’t on it. “I hate being average,” I said to a friend when the results came out. Average is boring. Being average doesn’t get you praise or external validation. Bike racers like Marianne Vos, who’s known as the finest cyclist of her generation, and Katie F’ing Compton, a 15-time national cyclocross champion, and Jolanda Neff, a 12-time cross-country mountain bike World Cup champion, will go down in the history books. Meanwhile, as a Cat 3…

Endurance is the foundation on which all your other training rests. Of course, it’ll help you ride farther than ever—but that base fitness will also help you get more out of higher-intensity riding and a heavier training load. These intervals build power and train your body to recover quickly between efforts for events and rides that demand repeated surges. In a medium to large gear, push hard for 40 seconds, and then recover for 20 seconds. Repeat 10 times. That’s one set. Do up to four, resting five minutes between sets. FLYING 40 INTERVALS WARM UP 15 MINUTES PEDAL HARD 40 SECONDS RECOVER 20 SECONDS REPEAT X 10 PEDAL EASY 5 MINUTES PEDAL HARD 40 SECONDS RECOVER 20 SECONDS  REPEAT X 10 COOL DOWN 10 MINUTES I’m all about the…

Train your body to generate more watts, and you’ll be faster everywhere. (We’re coming for you, town-sign sprint.) These efforts help you build and engage more muscle for more explosive power. They’ll also increase the intensity you can sustain over a 60-minute time trial, which corresponds to your lactate threshold. Sprint as hard as possible for 20 seconds. Coast for 10 seconds. Repeat six to eight times. TABATA INTERVALS REPEAT X 6 - 8 WARM UP 15 MINUTES SPRINT ALL OUT 20 SECONDS RECOVER 10 SECONDS COOL DOWN 10 MINUTES THE 10-MINUTE ABS WORKOUT THAT WILL FIRE UP YOUR ENTIRE CORE “YOU CAN NEVER have too much lower abdominal activation, especially when riding a bike,” says physical therapist Kellen Scantlebury of Fit Club NY. “These all-important muscles work with the…

Test Track: Cheap Mountain Bikes We have a lot of singletrack near the office, but test editor Bobby Lea wanted a custom course for testing mountain bikes. So he built 2.57 miles of singletrack on his property. The trail has rock gardens, flow sections, hard climbs, and technical descents—everything you need to evaluate a bike. With the trails barely burned in, we kicked off testing with a head-to-head comparison of two cheap mountain bikes: Trek’s $800 Marlin 7 and the $750 Giant Talon 29 2. We divided the course into three Strava segments that emphasized different performance traits. Below you can see how each performed on rocky, sprinty, and hilly sections of the trail, as well as which bike did the whole loop fastest. ROCK GARDEN/0.44 MILE Trek Marlin 7…

ROTOR 2 IN POWER POWERMETER/STARTING AT $1,300 This power meter is a data nerd’s dream. It reads and measures the angular velocity of the cranks at 200 points per second in order to provide you with the most accurate data possible on round or oval rings. Riders can take a deep dive into their power files with Rotor’s INpower software, but the brand’s Power app will translate ride data for you if you’re not well versed in power analysis. And the battery life is magnificent: Through four months of riding, we’ve yet to see the low-battery warning come on. WAHOO TICKR/$50 Record your data more accurately with one of the least expensive and most reliable dual-band heart-rate monitors you can buy: the Tickr. It uses Bluetooth and ANT+ technology to…

BLACK SHEEP ELEMENTS THERMAL SS JERSEY $198 Black Sheep constructs this thick, form-fitting jersey from a material it calls MITI Thermodream, which is composed of a soft, fleece-type liner and a windproof, DWR-treated exterior. In testing, we felt toasty riding in temps down to 50°F with the Elements (supplemented with a pair of arm warmers) as our only top. We loved this jersey so much, in fact, that we’ll cop to running annoyingly small loads of laundry after rides just to have it clean and ready the next day. THE BLACK BIBS PLUS WINTER SHORTS $70 A pair of fleece-lined bib shorts is essential for spring and fall riding, when it’s cool enough that a single layer of Lycra doesn’t keep your buns warm but full-length tights are liable to…