RIDING ADVICE FROM THE STARS OF THE U.S. WOMEN’S OLYMPIC TEAM P.38
THE POWER OF THE FTP IT’S GONNA HURT. BUT RIDING 20 MINUTES AS HARD AS YOU CAN WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING. P.32
THE IDEAL TRAIL BIKE — LIGHT, FULL OF ENERGY & EFFICIENT P.77
BEST POWERMEASURING PEDALS P.84
É KRT rider Siddeeq Shabazz throws down the watts in our Easton, Pennsylvania, Test Zone.
Meet Rival eTap AXS—the wireless electronic groupset with innovative gearing, integrated power measurement, and AXS connectivity. It’s low on complexity, but rich with features.
©2021 SRAM LLC
When Kasper Asgreen of Deceuninck - Quick-Step crossed the finish line at the Tour of Flanders on Specialized Turbo Cotton Hell of the North Clinchers, he did more than win the first monument of his career. He made history, ending the tubular’s century-long reign at the top of professional racing and fulfilling a promise Specialized made 45 years ago—the fastest, lightest, best handling tires, ridden by the best racers in the world, are the same tires you can ride every day.
I S S U E 4 , 2 0 2 1 // V O L U M E 6 2 // N U M B E R 0 4
D I S PAT C H E S , S M A R T TA K E S , AND EXPERT
F E A T U R E S
ADVICE FROM DEEP INSIDE T H E C YC L I N G
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HOW MANY LIVES CAN A SINGLE BIKE CHANGE?
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It’s the best way to track your progress, but it can do so much more. By Coach David Lipscomb
This mountain bike survived, and transformed, three generations of riders. By Kim Cross
RE VOLUTION
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THE FTP TEST
P.4 Aliya Barnwell’s musical
riding hack. // P.6 The best bacon, according to Kim Cross. // P.8 Where
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hidden elevation. // P.10 Jessica Coulon’s recovery smooth tubulars, from Brad Ford. // P.14 How Joy Chen rediscovered a city.
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Courtney, Dygert, Roberts, Valente, Willoughby...believe the hype. By Caitlin Giddings
Siddeeq Shabazz finds
ice cream. // P.12 Super-
MEET AMERICAN CYCLING’S BEST HOPE FOR OLYMPIC GOLD
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I RODE 14,000 MILES FROM ALASKA TO BOLIVIA. I’VE BEEN THROUGH WORSE. The pain and catharsis of a lifechanging transition and one epic ride. By Natalie Corbett
// P.16 Can we build a safer
LOUIS MOORE SPENT DECADES GETTING BLACK PEOPLE ON BIKES. HERE’S WHAT HE’S LEARNED. Wisdom from a veteran bike advocate. By Jada Jackson
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MARIO WAS 14 AND LOVED TO RIDE. HE WAS KILLED WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE. With no charges against the truck driver that hit him, Mario’s family fights for justice. By Peter Flax
future on bikes? by Matt Allyn. // P.18 Selene Yeager on how to find more gravel, plus: to smear or not to smear? // P.20 Steal Kate Courtney’s workout, with Jen See, plus: help your tubes last longer. // P.22 Replace a cassette,
dial in your cadence, and find your lactate
T E S T Z O N E TESTED We wear- and labtested lightweight summer jerseys for comfort and moisture management. P.69
BIKES Priority’s accessible new fixie, Ventum’s race-style gravel bike, Giant’s stable high-energy trailer, and Felt’s timeless racer. P.73
EDITORS’ CHOICE Wild shorts, a breezy basket, and comfortable MTB shoes. Plus: the smartest cycling computer we’ve tested. P.80
MATT ON TECH Frustrated with your power meter? These pedals provide more precise data on your training. P.84
threshold, with Coulon and Yeager. // P.88 How Micheli Oliver falls powerfully.
ON THE COVER: SIDDEEQ SHABAZZ PHOTOGRAPHED BY TREVOR RAAB
BICYCLING (ISSN 0006-2073) Vol. 62 No. 4 is published bimonthly, 6 times a year, by Hearst, 300 W. 57th St., NY, NY 10019. Steven R. Swartz, President & Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice Chairman; Mark E. Aldam, Chief Operating Officer. Hearst Magazines, Inc.: Debi Chirichella, President & Treasurer; John A. Rohan Jr., Senior Vice President Finance; Kristen M. O’Hara, Chief Business Officer; Catherine Bostron, Secretary. Copyright 2021 by Hearst Magazines, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS. (See DMM 507.1.5.2); NON-POSTAL and MILITARY FACILITIES: Send address changes to BICYCLING Customer Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500. In Canada: Postage paid at Gateway, Mississauga, Ontario; Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 40012499. Return any address changes to BICYCLING, PO Box 927 Stn Main, Markham, Ontario L3P 9Z9; GST #R122988611. BICYCLING, incorporating Cyclist magazine, is published by Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Bicycling is a registered trademark of Hearst Communications, Inc. Mailing Lists: From time to time we make our subscriber list available to companies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings by postal mail, please send your current mailing label or exact copy to: Bicycling, Mail Preference Center, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 515931500. You can also visit preferences.hearstmags.com to manage your preferences and opt out of receiving marketing offers by mail. Customer Service: Visit service.bicycling.com or write to Bicycling Customer Service, P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-1500.
ISSUE 4 | 2021 •
BICYCLING.COM
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INSIDE KNOWLEDGE
WE BEGGED SOME OF THIS ISSUE’S COOLEST RIDERS FOR THEIR BEST ADVICE
ALIYA BARNWELL TEST ZONE, P.69 Music and food are huge motivators for me. I play music at 170 bpm minimum to try to keep my cadence above 85 rpm, and I like to ride toward food. Plus, seeing anything moving faster than I am is a reminder to push a little harder. ALSO: Buying once is best—buy for the long term!
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BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 4 | 2021
Photograph by T R E V O R R A A B
4:16:54
32°11’07.6” S 22°35’34.8” E
THE NEXT-GENERATION CYCLING COMPUTER Karoo 2 brings advanced routing and powerful training features to your handlebars on a stunning, full-color, touchscreen display. Shop at Hammerhead.io
INSIDE KNOWLEDGE
WE BEGGED SOME OF THIS ISSUE’S COOLEST RIDERS FOR THEIR BEST ADVICE
KIM CROSS STORY OF A MOUNTAIN BIKE, P.24 Benton’s bacon—thick, smoky, and super salty—is my secret ingredient in the Bacon and Egg Rice Cakes from Skratch Labs’ The Feed Zone Cookbook. The flavor reminds me of my mom’s fried rice (I add peas to make it even more like hers). Salty and umami, these rice cakes fit in a jersey pocket and taste great before, during, and after a ride. ALSO: Bikehandling skills and finesse are every bit as essential as fitness, strength, and endurance.
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Photograph by A N G I E S M I T H
CLASSIC JERSEY
INSIDE KNOWLEDGE
WE BEGGED SOME OF THIS ISSUE’S COOLEST RIDERS FOR THEIR BEST ADVICE
SIDDEEQ SHABAZZ FTP TEST, P.32 For riders who are hitting the roads frequently, make sure those chains and cassettes are clean. And make sure those tire pressures are set. ALSO: My favorite place to ride is easily the back roads of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. It’s some of the most deceptive elevation in the Philadelphia area, paired with some of the most amazing homes you’ll ever see.
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Photograph by T R E V O R R A A B
www.wahoofitness.com/RIVAL
MY BICYCLING LIFE EXPERT HACKS, GEAR RECS & BIKE-TESTED WISDOM FROM OUR STAFF
Bill Strickland
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Matt Allyn Features Director; Christine Anderson Executive Director of Commerce & Content Strategy; Brian Dalek Director of Content Operations; Leah Flickinger Director of Content Creation; Lou Mazzante Test Director; Suzanne Perreault Director of Editorial Operations; Jesse Southerland Creative Director
@JGCOULON
1 / Mons Royale Redwood Enduro VT $95 I love the cut and colors of this mountain bike jersey—and its breathable, temperatureregulating wool-blend fabric.
DESIGN + PHOTO
Amy Wolff Photo Director; Colin McSherry Senior Art Director; Alyse Markel Art Director; Eleni Dimou Senior Designer; Ash Bartholomew Digital Designer; Kristen Parker Photo Editor; John Hamilton Associate Photo Editor EDITORIAL
Molly Ritterbeck Health & Fitness Director; Bette Canter Deputy Editor; Taylor Rojek Features Editor; Tyler Daswick Associate Features Editor; Andrew Daniels How-To Editor; Courtney Linder Senior News Editor; Danielle Zickl Health & Fitness Editor; Jennifer Leman News Editor; Daisy Hernandez Associate News Editor; Drew Dawson Gear & News Editor; Jessica Coulon Assistant Editor; Leah Campano Editorial Planning Associate; Amber Joglar Administrative Assistant
2 / Pearl Izumi Women’s X-Alp Flow Shoes From $100 These flat pedal shoes are stylish, non-clunky, and perform well. 3 / Juliana Joplin CC X01 $7,699 A trail bike that’s fast, capable on tough terrain, and super nimble.
ASSISTANT EDITOR FIND ME IN THE PINES
GREATEST RIDE OF MY LIFE
MY IDEAL CYCLING SCENARIO
A women’s ride from Philly to Atlantic City, New Jersey, several years back. It was my first time riding with that many other women, it was my longest ride yet, and it was my first time riding in a serious paceline—one of the ride leaders dropped off the back to help me learn!
DREAM RIDE PARTNER My cat, Sawyer! It’ll never happen, though—he isn’t very adventurous.
A long mountain bike ride with friends, exploring somewhere new or not often ridden, and hanging out with good food afterward.
GO-TO RECOVERY ROUTINE
Probably ice cream or beer (or both). My favorites: Trader Joe’s Matcha Green Tea ice cream and Tröegs DreamWeaver Wheat beer.
ON THE BUCKET LIST There are tons of great trails in Rotorua, New Zealand. But I just really want to go to New Zealand in general. They’ve got Hobbiton and forest penguins—what’s not to love?
Caroline Dorey-Stein Assistant Special Projects Editor TEST TEAM
CRAZIEST MOMENT IN THE SADDLE It’s a toss-up: either riding 40 miles in the 2019 Five Boro Bike Tour on four hours of sleep in 50-degree weather and a constant downpour (I’m no Lael Wilcox), or mountain biking in New Jersey’s Wharton State Forest and getting caught in a cloud-to-ground lightning storm that triggered a massive forest fire.
HOW CYCLING CHANGED ME There’s nothing like changing a flat tire miles from home or tackling a gnarly rock feature to boost your confidence.
Will Egensteiner, Jennifer Sherry Associate Test Directors; Jeff Dengate, Matt Phillips Senior Test Editors; Roy Berendsohn, Adrienne Donica, Brad Ford, Amanda Furrer, Morgan Petruny Test Editors; Paige Szmodis Commerce Editor; Lakota Gambill, Trevor Raab Photographers; Joël Nankman Logistician VIDEO
Josh Wolff Director; Jimmy Cavalieri Production Manager; David Monk, Pat Heine Producers CONTRIBUTORS
Tamika Butler, Molly Hurford, Joe Lindsey, Riley Missel, Dan Roe, Selene Yeager, Whit Yost EDITORIAL OFFICE 132 South 3rd Street Easton, PA 18042 HOW TO REACH US Customer Care To change your address, cancel or renew your subscription, or pay your bill, visit Online bicycling.com/ customer-service, Phone 866-387-0509, Email BICcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com, Mail Customer Care, PO Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-0128. Include a recent mailing label with all correspondence. BICYCLING and Hearst Magazines, Inc., assume no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts and artwork, and are not responsible for their loss or damage. LICENSING AND REPRINTS Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s Media, at 877-652-5295 ext. 102 or hearst@ wrightsmedia.com. ATTENTION, RETAILERS Sell BICYCLING in your store, risk-free. Call 800-845-8050 for details. (Please, no subscriber calls to this number.) ISSUE 4, 2021
P RIN T E D IN T HE U. S . A .
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Cour tesy Mike Carlson (profile); Trevor Raab (Juliana); Cour tesy Pearl Izumi (shoes); Cour tesy Mons Royale (shir t); Jessica Coulon (Saw yer); Getty Images (Hobbiton)
JESSICA COULON
*Grizlin‘ is just like riding, but with your priorities set right. Experience over performance. Stories over glories. Grizlin‘ means rolling out the door with an open mind, not knowing quite what‘s going to happen.
GONE GRIZLIN’ The Grizl is a do-anything, go-anywhere, all-you-might-ever-need Gravel bike. We’ve built a bike that’s fast across mixed terrain, at home on the rough stuff, and ready for real adventure—be it single-day epics or week-long expeditions. Get Grizlin’*. Unleash your inner Grizl at canyon.com.
MY BICYCLING LIFE
Paul Collins
PUBLISHER / CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER SALES & MARKETING OFFICES
Gordon Selkirk West Coast Cycling Director, gordon.selkirk@hearst.com; Matt Jacobs East Coast Cycling Director, matt.jacobs@hearst.com; New York: Ian Sinclair Eastern Sales Director, ian. sinclair@hearst.com; Samantha Wolf NY Sales Assistant; Kyle Taylor East Coast Auto Director, kyle.taylor@hearst.com; Chicago: Stacey Lakind Midwest Sales Director, stacey.lakind@hearst.com; Detroit: Sam Shanahan Detroit Automotive Director, sam.shanahan@hearst. com; Los Angeles: Patti Lange Western Sales Director, patti.lange@hearst.com; Anne Rethmeyer Group Sales Director, Auto, anne.rethmeyer@hearst.com; Marketplace and Events: Jackie Coker Advertising Manager, jcokermedia@ gmail.com
EXPERT HACKS, GEAR RECS & BIKE-TESTED WISDOM FROM OUR STAFF
@BRADFRD
PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW
MARKETING
Alison Brown Director, Events and Programs; Sarah Hemstock Associate Director, Integrated Marketing; Jana Nesbitt Gale Executive Creative Director; Michael B. Sarpy Art Director; Caroline Hall, Emma Sklarin Marketing Coordinators
BRAD FORD TEST EDITOR IF IT CAN BE BROKEN, IT CAN BE FIXED
DON’T GET ME STARTED ON... The newest craze, whatever it is, that tells me I need a whole new set of gear to enjoy cycling.
3 / Veloflex Raven 27 Tubular Tires $96 I don’t know anyone else still riding tubulars, but I’m in love with how smooth these roll.
LISTEN UP As cyclists, we need to change the general public’s perception that the bicycle is just a toy used for recreation. And within the cycling community, we need to stop treating certain types of bikes as elite membership cards—in other words, there’s no right type of bike. We’re all cyclists, regardless of what we ride.
WHAT I’M WORKING TOWARD Just trying to ride at least three times a week. Working from home, with my wife doing the same, and managing our 6-year-old’s virtual school schedule was stressful. Making time for a ride, which sounds easy during WFH, was actually a major challenge for me.
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2 / Kinetic R1 Direct Drive Smart Trainer $699 I have a hard time riding indoors, but the R1 motivated me through the past winter and spring.
BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 4 | 2021
MEN’S & ENTHUSIAST GROUP
Jack Essig Senior Vice President, Publishing Director & Chief Revenue Officer; Samantha Irwin General Manager; Cameron Connors Executive Director, Head of Brand Strategy & Marketing; Everette Hampton Executive Assistant GLOBAL EDITIONS
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Simon Horne SVP/Managing Director Asia Pacific & Russia; Kim St. Clair Bodden SVP/Editorial & Brand Director; Chloe O’Brien Deputy Brands Director; Shelley Meeks Executive Director, Content Services Steven R. Swartz President & Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice Chairman; Mark E. Aldam Chief Operating Officer
Everyone else seems to want to start rides later in the morning. I like to get home and still have the day in front of me.
A goal. I love to ride, but when life gets busy, I need something significant to aim for. Without that, it’s too easy to put riding aside because of all the other things pulling at my attention.
Rick Day Vice President, Strategy & Business Management
PUBLISHED BY HEARST
SUNRISE RIDES WHAT GETS ME OUT THERE
CIRCULATION
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Debi Chirichella President and Treasurer; Kate Lewis Chief Content Officer; Kristen M. O’Hara, Chief Business Officer; Catherine Bostron Secretary
GREATEST— AND HARDEST— RIDE OF MY LIFE The Rapha Gentlemen’s Race (now called Prestige) in 2011. It was a 135-mile team time trial, with 12,000 feet of climbing. The ride was made even harder because I’d spent the season dedicated to training for track racing. We finished in 8 hours, 55 minutes—the fastest time of the day, but only good enough for third place. I spent probably seven of those hours suffering. But the climbing, the pace, the muscle cramps, the bucolic Pennsylvania Dutch farmland, the teamwork that pulled me across the line—it was all glorious.
Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller Publishing Consultants 300 West 57th Street New York, NY 10019
Trevor Raab (profile, NFS, Kinetic, Veloflex); Cour tesy Andrew Bernstein (Rapha race)
1 / NixFrixShun Ultimate Bicycle Chain Lube $15 It’s super-viscous, but you only need to use a few drops on a dry, clean chain. It finds its way to all the links.
Karen Ferber Business Manager; Paul Baumeister Research Director; Alison Papalia Executive Director, Consumer Marketing; Trevor Czak Business Coordinator; Mike Ruemmler Production Manager, michael.ruemmler@ pubworx.com
PLANT PROTEIN NUT
Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez
PLANT PROTEIN NUT
MY BICYCLING LIFE
EXPERT HACKS, GEAR RECS & BIKE-TESTED WISDOM FROM OUR MEMBERS
JOY CHEN, 51 ALTADENA, CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES: NOT JUST FOR CARS!
FINDING A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
Running out of juice on an e-bike while still far from home is no fun. I had to get me and my 60-pound bike home on pedal power alone. On long rides, I’ve learned to set my electric power to the very lowest level, then rely on pedal power—and pray!
I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 30 years and pride myself on knowing our city well. I earned a Master of Urban Planning here, and then served as Deputy Mayor. I’ve seen firsthand how urban planning for bicycles can be a low-cost and high-value way to create a more livable city for everyone. The Ride with GPS app takes me on local bike paths, bike lanes, and side streets, introducing me to so many sights and roads that I never knew existed. Bicycling let me fall in love with L.A. all over again.
WHY I STARTED CYCLING
GEAR I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT My rear-view handlebar mirrors. I feel so much safer being able to see what’s happening behind me without having to turn my head.
During COVID-19 lockdowns, I was desperate for exercise. My e-bike, the Gazelle Ultimate T10+ HMB, became my favorite way to move around.
My Cycling Style in Three Words
SAFE, FAST, GREEN.
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REDISCOVERING CITY SIGHTS I love the ride from my home, along the Los Angeles River, to the Hollywood Sign and back. The section of the river accessible to cars is an ugly concrete channel, but after riding the bike path along the banks, I was shocked to discover it’s an ecosystem chock-full of wildlife.
MY FAVORITE TIME TO RIDE Early on Sunday mornings. This may sound odd, but I go to a huge local cemetery that has amazing vistas and great hills. It’s so quiet and peaceful there.
My rides are totally integrated into my life. Bicycling has replaced 90 percent of my solo car trips around Los Angeles. With my two panniers, I deliver food to my mom, haul groceries, and get to meetings. In my line of work, I help Asian and Asian American women find joy in their career and in love. It’s exciting but intense work, especially in this past year when we Asians have been targeted by so much hate. Time on my bike gives me extra space to unwind, think, and brainstorm new ideas.
Cour tesy Joy Chen (profile, bike)
BICYCLING MEMBER
LESSONS LEARNED: E-BIKE EDITION
WHAT GETS ME OUT THERE
L E T T E R FROM AN E N T H U S I A S T
ROADS BELONG TO OUR KIDS ing on Peter Flax’s feature about the tragedy of Mario Valenzuela (p.56). Mario was a 14-year-old who loved to ride but was right-hooked and crushed by the driver of a Mack truck on Borden
around the corner from my apartment building. We pedaled the same roads, met riding buddies in the same parks, dropped into the same shops for a tube. The Valenzuelas are fighting for justice in Mario’s death after the NYPD declined criminal charges for the driver and blamed the crash on their son. The family is owed justice, from the driver, the truck owner, the police, and the institutions that made Borden Avenue one of the most dangerous streets in the city. I pass Borden at least once a week, and the three-block stretch from where I cross it to Mario’s ghost bike has been the site of six crashes that left four cyclists injured and two dead over the last four years. But while I’m fretting at the playground, Mario’s mother, Martha, is bringing the fight for safer roads to those with the power to make a difference. This spring she spoke before the New York City Council during a debate to pull crash investigations like
@ M D A L LY N
Over live video she shared her immeasurable pain, retelling Mario’s story to strangers she hopes can prevent another crash. I’m proud of our advocacy work at Bicycling, but Martha’s courage and action remind me that you also need to enter the fray at your front door. I’ve started by getting to know my Community Board (a hyper-local level of NYC government that can champion or dismiss new bike lanes) and its transportation committee. I also have the privilege of time. Despite her endearing enthusiasm, Rose has yet to master coasting, braking, or making sharp turns without picking the front wheel up. Instead of letting my bike-lane anxiety gently gnaw at my stomach, I’m going to see what change I can help push so that our streets are safe for all riders. M AT T A L LY N FEATURES DIRECTOR
CONTRIBUTORS
JADA JACKSON P.46
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“I enjoy connecting with Black elders and learning about their legacies,” says Jackson, who is an editorial fellow at House Beautiful. She spoke with Louis Moore, the 80-year-old cofounder of Minneapolis’s Major Taylor Bicycling Club. “It was impactful to hear how Louis leads his life, breaking through barriers and creating space for himself,” she says.
BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 4 | 2021
NATA L I E CORBETT P.50
Corbett, who is the first openly transgender woman to bike the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina, discovered her authentic self and learned to let go of lingering insecurities through big rides. “Just thinking about being in the Andes Mountains brings tears to my eyes,” she says. “I’ve come so far and grown so much stronger.”
IKE EDEANI P.56
Edeani, whose work can be seen in such outlets as The New York Times and TIME, photographed the devastating story about the death of 14-year-old Mario Valenzuela. “My approach was simply to hold space for the Valenzuela family in their unimagineable grief, and keep Mario in my thoughts as I spent time where he tragically lost his life,” he says.
Cour tesy Matt Allyn; Cour tesy Jada Jackson; Cour tesy Natalie Corbett; Cour tesy Ike Edeani
My daughter Rose took her first steps on a balance bike last month. Watching her giggle and manhandle the five-pound bike around the playground—and learn that no, it can’t go up stairs— left me blinking back tears. But it also planted a slow-growing seed of dread for the day she’ll ask to hit the road. She might be ready in several years, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be. Although our Astoria neighborhood in Queens has seen massive improvements in bike infrastructure over the decade we’ve lived here, it’s still not near enough for more vulnerable riders. We have several miles of protected bike lanes, but every stretch without a concrete barrier serves as a loading zone for trucks and a passing lane for, well, assholes in a big goddamn hurry. I’ve developed an ear for speeding sedans and an eye for drivers that will turn without signaling. And I can navigate around the flatbeds unloading transformers in the lane outside the power plant. But you shouldn’t need such skills to safely ride through your neighborhood. Now that Rose is taking her first gleeful scoots around an empty basketball court, I’ve been wondering, how do we make our roads the domain of our children? If I pass down my love for riding, how do I also give her a place to ride and learn without dire consequences? These questions hit particularly hard after work-
HOW TO DO IT E X P L O R E YO U R N AT I O N A L FOREST SERVICE // National and
state forests are filled with unpaved gems. You can find National Forest maps at the U.S. Forest Service website. It includes links to “offhighway vehicle touring,” which means those routes are made for gravel bike fun. You can also check out the National Forest Foundation to find sweet forest service roads. L O O K A R O U N D B I K E R E G //
You ca n a lw ay s sig n up for a gravel or mixed-terrain event near you and let someone else do the route-finding legwork. Just go to bikereg.com, click the “Gravel Grinder” tab under “Event Calendars,” and select the miles and location you want to search. As gravel grows in popularity, there are more events popping up all the time. Even if organized events aren’t your jam, many publish their routes, so you can discover new roads by checking out their courses. CHECK OUT RAILS-TO-TRAILS //
Find Gravel Roads Near You There’s one thing nearly all gravel riders want: more gravel. Though some of us in remote regions such as the Ozarks, Flint Hills, and Sun Valley may have hundreds of miles of gravel roads right out our front door, others may have to work a little harder to find dirt roads to ride. The good news is that as more riders choose paths less paved, there are more resources available to locate great gravel routes. Here’s where to look.
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G O T O G R A V E L M A P // The
site gravelmap.com launched in 2014 as a pet project, but it soon became a solid resource for stringing together gravel road routes. Just pop in an address or area where you want to ride, and a map view shows up with gravel roads highlighted in yellow. Of course, there are some caveats: It’s usergenerated, so details on the roads can be a bit spotty. Does it carve through a low-lying bog? You’ll have to ride it to find out!
BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 4 | 2021
The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has been a force for gravel-trail goodness since 1986. There are currently more than 24,000 miles of rail-trails and over 8,000 miles in the works. Head to traillink.com and search your region and the keyword “gravel.” Railstotrails.org also offers downloadable maps of the Great American Rail-Trail across the country.
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR EVERY PART OF YOUR RIDE LIFE
DECIDE WHETHER TO BUTTER UP — OR NOT Some cyclists wear chamois cream—an anti-chafing balm or lotion that you apply to your skin or to the pad—to further reduce friction and the risk of chafing. But do you really need to use it? Chamois cream was necessary back in the old days when chamois pads were actually made of high-quality leather rather than high-tech synthetic material. Today’s carefully engineered “shammies,” however, are designed to work without it. “I believe if you need to smear all kinds of lotion on you, there’s something wrong,” says Boulder, Colorado–based product consultant Jon Knoll, who helped develop apparel for Pearl Izumi and Specialized. “You probably have shorts that don’t fit your body properly. You shouldn’t need chamois cream to ride without friction or sores.” That said, if you’re going to be riding in wet conditions, especially for a long ride, chamois cream can provide added protection in those more extreme circumstances. Likewise, if you plan to ride gravel or rough unpaved surfaces where you may be shifting around in the saddle a lot, a layer of lotion can help reduce friction and keep you comfortable.—S.Y.
S E A R C H YO U R O W N S TAT E R E S O U R C E S // Google is your
friend—just search “(Your State) unpaved roads.” Chances are you’ll at least find routes that Jeep enthusiasts favor. Some states (Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, and Pennsylvania) also have unpaved roads mapped out on websites.—Selene Yeager
Photography by T R E V O R R A A B
BIKES ARE MEANT TO BE USED
Expect more with 30-day returns, an industry-first buyback program, and bikes shipped to your door that are ready to ride in 15 minutes or less. theproscloset.com
HOW TO DO IT
KEEP YOUR TUBES IN GOOD SHAPE That spare tube in your saddlebag could be a lifesaver if you get a flat tire on a long ride, but it would be a bummer to discover that the tube was no longer good. Make sure your bike’s inner tubes are in good shape when you need them by following these tips.
DO S TA SH T HEM W I T H VA LV E C A P S ON // Those pesky little tops ensure the valve doesn’t poke a hole in the tube when you fold it up for storage. This is especially important for Presta-style valves, which are particularly pointy. DON ’ T PL ACE NE A R A HE AT SOURCE // Heat degrades rubber, making it brittle and less elastic. Keep tubes away from direct sunlight and other sources of warmth like a heater. DO SPRINK L E W I T H TA L CUM P O W DER // Storing a tube in a plastic bag with talcum powder keeps it from sticking to itself, plus it makes it easier to install.—Kelsey Molseed
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CHALLENGE YOUR CORE LIKE KATE COURTNEY If you follow Kate Courtney on Instagram, you’ve seen how much hard work the mountain bike world champion puts in at the gym. Aside from Olympic lifts and plyometric moves, Courtney also shares seriously badass core-strength exercises. “Cross-country mountain biking involves a lot of strength, coordination, and balance,” she says. Though cycling is primarily an endurance sport, Courtney believes every rider can benefit from building a stronger core. (For more on Courtney, see page 38.) No matter what type of cycling you prefer, better balance and a stronger core are essential for everything you do, both on and off the bike. Here’s one of Courtney’s signature workout moves.
BALANCE BALL KNEEL
STEP 1
If you’re new to balance ball exercises, this move is a great place to start. Courtney recommends using a wall for support. “Most people are going to feel pretty wobbly,” she says. “After trying it a couple times, you’ll progress quickly.” Place a balance ball next to a wall and stand behind it. Using the wall for support, kneel on top of the ball one knee at a time. Brace core to balance and let go of wall. Once you can balance near the wall for 30 seconds, move the ball to the middle of the room and repeat. Build up to being able to kneel on the ball for 60 seconds. “The biggest thing is stability in your core, so you should feel like you have a solid, engaged core while kneeling on the ball,” says Courtney.
STEP 2
Once you master that move, increase the challenge by adding a medicine ball: Hold the medicine ball with both hands in front of hips. With a slight bend in elbows, press the ball up overhead diagonally to the right, lower it, then press it up again to the left. Continue to alternate for 30 to 60 seconds or as long as you can balance.—Jen See
Ian Tuttle (Cour tney)
DON ’ T S T ORE IN A S A DDL EB AG T OO L ONG // Tubes that sit for over one month can end up with weaknesses or cracks where the tubes are folded. They can also be damaged by jostling against other items while you ride. Unpack them occasionally to prevent cracking or splitting. When in doubt, inflate them to check for leaks.
CBD FOR YOUR PAIN Life really does fly by. Before I knew it, my 40s had arrived, and with them came some new gifts from dear ol’ Mother Nature—frequent knee pain, stress, low energy and sleeplessness. Now, I’m a realist about these things, I knew I wasn’t going to be young and resilient forever. But still, with “middle-age” nearly on my doorstep, I couldn’t help but feel a little disheartened. That is until I found my own secret weapon. Another gift from Mother Nature. It began a few months back when I was complaining about my aches and pains to my riding buddy, Ben, who is my same age. He casually mentioned how he uses CBD oil to help with his joint pain. He said that CBD has given him more focus and clarity throughout the day and that his lingering muscle and joint discomfort no longer bothered him. That made even this self-proclaimed skeptic take notice. But I still had some concerns. According to one study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 70% of CBD products didn’t contain the amount of CBD stated on their labels. And, as a consumer, that’s terrifying! If I was going to do this, I needed to trust the source through and through. My two-fold research process naturally led me to Zebra CBD. First, I did a quick online poll—and by that, I mean I posed the CBD question on my Facebook page. Call me old fashioned but I wanted to know if there were people whom I trusted (more than anonymous testimonials) who’ve had success us-
ing CBD besides my buddy. That is how I found out that Zebra CBD has a label accuracy guarantee which assures customers like me what is stated on the label is in the product. Secondly, I wanted cold hard facts. Diving deep into the world of CBD research and clinical studies, I came across Emily Gray M.D., a physician at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) Medical School and medical advisor for Zebra CBD who is researching the effects of CBD. Dr. Gray wrote “early results with CBD have been promising and we have a lot of research underway now. I’ve had several patients using CBD with good success. It’s important that you know your source of CBD and how to use it properly.” After hearing it from the doctor’s mouth, I returned to my online poll and was amazed by the number of close friends and family who were already on the CBD train. Apparently, I was the only one without a clue! And funny enough, a couple of friends who commented were using the same brand as my buddy—Zebra CBD. There was no consensus as to why they were using CBD, but the top reasons given were for muscle & joint discomfort, mood support, sleep support, stress and headaches, as well as supporting overall health & wellness. Eventually, even the most skeptical of the bunch can be won over. With a trusted CBD source in mind, I decided to try it. When I viewed Zebra CBD’s selection online, I was impressed by its array of products, including CBD
oils called tinctures, topicals, chewable tablets, mints and gummies. After reading on their website that all their products are made with organically-grown hemp, I ordered... and it arrived within 2 days! The first product I tried was the rub. Now this stuff was strong. Immediately after rubbing it on my knee, the soothing effects kicked in. It had that familiar menthol cooling effect, which I personally find very relieving. And the best part is, after two weeks of using it, my knee pain no longer affected my daily mobility. The Zebra Gummies, on the other hand, had a different but equally positive effect on my body. To take it, the instructions suggest chewing thoroughly. This was simple enough, and the taste was, well, lemony. After about 15 minutes, a sense of calm came over my body. It’s hard to describe exactly; it’s definitely not a “high” feeling. It’s more like an overall sense of relaxation—a chill factor. Needless to say, I’ve really enjoyed the gummies. While it hasn’t been a catch-all fix to every one of my health issues, it has eased the level and frequency of my aches. And it sure doesn’t seem like a coincidence how much calmer and more focused I am. All-in-all, CBD is one of those things that you have to try for yourself. Although I was skeptical at first, I can say that I’m now a Zebra CBD fan and that I highly recommend their products. My 40s are looking up! Also, I managed to speak with a company spokesperson willing to provide an exclusive offer to Bicycling readers. If you order this month, you’ll receive $10 off your first order by using promo code “Bike10” at checkout. Plus, the company offers a 100% No-Hassle, Money-Back Guarantee. You can try it yourself and order Zebra CBD at ZebraCBD.com.
HOW TO DO IT
DIAL IN YOUR IDEAL CADENCE
Remove your rear wheel from the bike, then remove the skewer. Attach the chain whip tool (or cassette pliers) to one of the cogs.
REPLACE A WORN CASSETTE WHAT YOU ’ LL N E E D Chain whip tool: Alternatively, you can use cassette pliers. Lockring tool: These come in several sizes, so get one that’s compatible. Some come with a handle or a guide pin to secure it in place.
New chain: Chains and cassettes wear down together. You’ll want to run a fresh chain on your new cassette.
Adjustable wrench: If needed, based on lockring tool type.
Bike grease: Apply to the outer freehub body and lockring threading.
The point at which you begin to accumulate lactate quicker than your body can clear it is your lactate threshold. It is thought of as the border between high- and low-intensity work, or roughly the effort experienced in a flat-out, 30-minute time trial. Your lactate threshold may be a better baseline than max heart rate (MHR) for determining training zones, because two cyclists with the same MHR may have widely varying lactate thresholds
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New cassette: To keep it easy, simply pick up a new version of your current cassette.
due to genetic or training differences. Sedentary people can have lactate thresholds as low as 50 percent of their max heart rates, while elite athletes may be able to maintain 90 to 95 percent MHR for an hour. FIND YOUR LACTATE THRESHOLD WITH A DIY TIME TRIAL // Map a three-mile route you can ride without stopping. Strap on a heart rate monitor, warm up for 20 minutes, then ride
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Place the lockring tool onto the lockring at the end. If the tool doesn’t have a handle, use a wrench. Using the chain whip tool to hold the cassette in place, turn the lockring tool counterclockwise to unscrew and remove the lockring. Now remove the old cassette. Replace the freehub body if there’s excessive wear, especially if it’s aluminum. Grease the outside of the freehub body, and install each cog of the new cassette in order, along with any spacers, so that they align with the corresponding splines and with the inscribed (tooth count) side facing out. Once the new cassette is fully in place, reinstall the lockring using the lockring tool with grease applied to the threading. Reinstall the skewer, then install your rear wheel onto your bike, and test out the new cassette.—Jessica Coulon
the route at the fastest pace you can sustain. Recover for 10 to 20 minutes (ride back to the start at an easy pace). Repeat the threemile test. Your lactate threshold is approximately the average heart rate of the two efforts, or 103 percent of that figure.—S.Y., Danielle Kosecki, and Bicycling Editors
THE IDEAL CADENCE RANGE FOR EACH TYPE OF RIDER, ACCORDING TO ALLEN:
2 2 2 2
Fast-Twitch/Less Fit: 75 to 85 rpm Fast-Twitch/More Fit: 85 to 90 rpm Slow-Twitch/Less Fit: 85 to 90 rpm Slow-Twitch/More Fit: 95+ rpm —S.Y.
Lakota Gambill (Polar)
HOW TO DO IT
In a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers found that amateur cyclists used the least energy pedaling at 60 rpm but preferred an average cadence of 81 rpm, which was also the sweet spot where their vastus lateralis—a primary cycling quadriceps muscle—produced maximum power without wasting energy. According to Hunter Allen, cycling coach and founder of Peaks Coaching Group, your ideal cadence largely depends on your main muscle fiber type and your level of cardiovascular fitness. If you gain muscle easily and naturally excel at explosive movements like sprinting, you likely have more fast-twitch fibers and will be more comfortable with a lower cadence under 85. If you don’t build muscle easily and can ride all day at a steady pace, you likely have more slow-twitch fibers and will prefer to pedal faster with less force per stroke. If you’re new to the sport or not in your best shape right now, your cardiovascular system can’t handle the higher heart rate that comes with high cadences, and you’ll prefer to rely more on muscle strength. As you get fitter, you will tend to shift the work to your cardiovascular system and pedal more quickly.
BOOST YOUR POWER Cyclists have long sought ways to boost their performance through nutritional supplements and creative training strategies. Some have gone as far as using synthetic drugs and blood doping to gain an advantage. One training strategy is giving some cyclists EPO-like effects and in turn, increasing their VO2 max. The boost is coming from a product called EPOBOOST, a natural supplement developed by U.S. based Biomedical Research Laboratories. EPO is industry shorthand for erythropoietin, a hormone produced by the kidneys that regulates red blood cell (RBC) production. Increasing red blood cell production has long been the focus of competitive athletes due to the impact that RBC levels have on oxygen intake and utilization. The greater the red blood cell production, the greater the body’s ability to absorb oxygen, which in turn gives an athlete more strength and endurance. Strength and endurance are precious resources to any athlete. Thus competitive athletes have tried various techniques to gain an advantage by increasing EPO and RBC levels. Traditional techniques for boosting RBC levels include synthetic drugs and blood doping. These practices are both dangerous and banned by organized sports associations. The makers of EPOBOOST claim that their patent-pending formula is all-natural and is clinically shown to safely increase erythropoietin levels, resulting in greater strength and endurance. The scientific evidence behind EPO-BOOST does seem to be compelling. A 28-day double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, per-
formed by Dr. Whitehead from the Department of Health and Human Performance at Northwestern State University, showed that the active ingredient in EPO-BOOST increased EPO production by over 90% compared to the group taking the placebo. The supplement group also showed dramatic improvements in athletic performance (as measured by VO2max and running economy). Since its release, competitive athletes have raved about this new supplement, which offers all the benefits of greater EPO levels with none of the dangerous side effects or legal trouble. Pablo Santa Cruz, a category one cyclist, used EPO-BOOST. Pablo stated, “I am very skeptical with nutritional supplements due to the prevalent lack of clean manufacturing practices and banned substance contamination. I am very glad to have researched and tested EPO-BOOST to my and my performance support team’s satisfaction. Particularly, I am very encouraged with breaking through key power and speed thresholds after 6 weeks of using these products.” Mr. Cruz is not alone in his praise of the product. Travis Beam, a top cyclist from North Carolina, used EPO-BOOST in his preparation for his season. Travis stated, “starting the season I made several goals to accomplish in my racing career. To achieve those goals, I knew I needed something extra to support my training. After a month of using EPO-BOOST I started seeing crazy gains in my endurance and power during training and my speed picked up to the next level! I am a firm believer in these products and cannot wait to see how these gains will help my performance in events later this year.” Not everyone is so endeared to the product. Sev-
eral athletes have said the supplement gives some athletes an unfair advantage. They describe the performance improvements as “unnatural” and pointed to athletes from cycling and long distance running as evidence that people are catching onto the supplement and using it for a competitive advantage. A company spokesman, speaking off the record, admitted that the product doesn’t work overnight and that most athletes won’t see the extreme performance enhancements for 3-4 weeks. In a world infatuated with instant success, that kind of realistic admission might cost some sales but is likely to keep customers happy. While the controversy over the advantage athletes using EPO-BOOST are obtaining is unlikely to go away anytime soon, one thing is for sure; blood doping and synthetic drugs are a thing of the past now that amateurs and professionals alike can tap into a natural product that generates Olympian-like strength and endurance. Any athlete can use EPO-BOOST without a prescription and without changing a diet or exercise regimen. The company offers an unparalleled guarantee. Athletes can use the product for a full 90 days and if not completely satisfied, send back whatever product is remaining - even an empty bottle - and get a ‘no questions asked’ refund. A company spokesman confirmed an exclusive offer for Bicycling readers. If you order this month, you’ll receive $10 off your first order by using promo code “Bike10” at checkout. You can order EPOBOOST today at EPOBOOST.com or by calling 1-800-780-4331.
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E K I B N I A T N U O M A F O Y R O T HE S T G N I V I G P O T S T ’ N D L U O W T A H
BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 4 | 2021
BY
KIM CROSS PHO T OGR A PH Y BY
ANGIE SMITH
I arrived with a raincoat and a credit card. Thunder rumbled as I traded my driver’s license for a test ride. The demo guy screwed my pedals onto a Giant Anthem X W, a women’s cross-country bike with 26-inch wheels. For a full-suspension aluminum rig with a triple chainring and 9-speed cassette, this bike was light—around 24 pounds—but I didn’t understand that. My lexicon was missing words like “drivetrain” and “components.” The paint, a silver and seafoam green, reminded me of an ocean fish, and the white fork gleamed. I didn’t know what geometry meant. I just knew this bike looked fast. I set off on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, a spaghetti-like beginner trail I’d ridden—badly—so many times that each wheel-stalling root, overcooked turn, and handlebar-grabbing tree had become a splinter lodged in my confidence. I was used to a hardtail, one size too large, with tires I inflated (on advice from a dude) to a rigid 60 psi. Rock gardens jarred my vision blurry, and every turn felt like ice. I blamed my bike-handling skills. The Anthem floated over roots that usually rattled the fillings near out of my teeth. Even in peanut-buttery mud, off-camber turns carved like berms. Within my first quarter-mile on the Anthem, I felt that fluttery thing in your chest that signals you’re in love. I couldn’t really afford this bike, more than twice the price of my hardtail. I plunked down my credit card anyway. Sold the hardtail. My husband and mom paid off my bike debt as a birthday gift. It wouldn’t be true to say that the Anthem made me a better rider overnight. It happened instantly, there on that trail, as if by some sort of spell. I didn’t know then how this bike would shape my future. How it would turn into a vehicle for so much more than a ride. How it would carry three generations to places we never imagined. It was just a bike. My first great bike. And it made me really happy.
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T HE A U T HOR W I T H T HE A N T HE M T OD AY ( A B O V E ) A ND IN P E L H A M , AL ABAMA, 2011 (OPPOSITE).
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HE RIGHT BIKE CHANGES EVERYTHING.
Familiar trails transmogrified beneath the Anthem’s wheels. A steep and chunky two-mile climb mysteriously slackened, as if the grade had been dialed down like the incline on a treadmill. Rocky roads melted into vanilla ice cream, like they’d been groomed by some dirt-loving snowcat. Obstacles shrank as my confidence grew. I aimed for the very rocks and logs I previously avoided. I was a new mother, and the Anthem became my escape pod. Finally competent enough to ride alone, I found solace in the solitude. Then the bike became a mobile gym for shedding the baby weight. I hooked a trailer to the Anthem and towed my son up hills, spinning in the triple chainring’s granniest gear. The baby napped, my quads burned, and distant goals drew closer. Next, the Anthem morphed into a vehicle for redemption. Before having my son, I’d entered—and failed to finish—three adventure races. These grueling multisport sufferfests, lasting from 12 to 24 hours, taught me the value (and price) of endurance. I begged my husband, an Eco-Challenge veteran, to help me cobble together a team and cross one lousy finish line. We finished a 12-hour race—in fourth—and found ourselves unwittingly qualified for the national championships. It went badly. We persisted. Sometime around midnight, cold and seven miles off course, we pushed our bikes through a moonlit field, encircled by snarling dogs. In the 30th hour of that 24-hour race, I carried the Anthem through shin-
Edward Badham (2011 riding)
“WITHIN MY FIRST QUARTER-MILE ON THE ANTHEM, I FELT THAT FLUTTERY THING IN YOUR CHEST THAT SIGNALS YOU’RE IN LOVE.” ISSUE 4 | 2021 • BICYCLING.COM
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T HR E E G E NE R AT IO N S : K IM ( C E N T E R ) W I T H HE R S ON , A U S T IN , A ND HE R MO T HE R , JO Y C E .
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deep mud, crying and laughing deliriously in a fugue of sleep deprivation. After dawn, we crossed the finish line in some place other than last. As the baby grew into a toddler, we started racing cyclocross. Unwilling to invest in a ’cross bike, I spent my first season heaving the Anthem over barriers and monster-trucking through mud pits. Our toddler assisted the Beer Fairy—a tutu-wearing, smack-talking, beer-offering mascot—by picking up empty Solo cups. He charged through the kids’ course with a race face worthy of Paris-Roubaix, earning shiny plastic trophy cups smaller than a shot glass. Cyclocross whipped my lungs, my legs, and (thanks to the 24-pound Anthem) my arms into unprecedented shape. Emboldened by this fighting trim, I started racing off-road triathlons. I endured the swim, dreaded the run, and biked like a woman with her hair on fire trying to put it out with wind. In another moment my pre-Anthem self could never have foreseen, I was invited to race for Team USA at the ITU Cross Triathlon World Championships. The Anthem needed an upgrade. My husband sourced hand-me-down parts and masterminded the overhaul, which probably shaved a pound or so off the already pretty light bike. We swapped the triple chainring for a double, which powered a newer drivetrain. We added hydraulic brakes and lighter wheels, each with a single red spoke. My husband made Team USA, too. We spent months training harder than ever—running, swimming, and biking twice a day, seven days a week—with a coach and an escalating food bill. The event that year was held in our hometown, on trails we knew by heart. We swaggered up to the starting line, expecting the race of our lives. It was, but not in the way we’d anticipated. Race-day nervous stomach turned out to be a touch of the flu. My husband finished far short of his goal. I finished dead last. When it was over, I fought the urge to hide my tears from my son, now 5. He needed to see them, to see me fail, to know that failure is part of this. At home, he presented me with one of his kids-race trophies. “Even though you didn’t win, I want you to have this,” he said. “ ’Cause I’m still proud of you.”
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H E FI RST B I KE S WITH 2 9 - I NCH WH E E LS HAD B E E N ON TH E
market for several years. None of them, on a small-size frame, felt better to me than the Anthem. But when 27.5inch wheels arrived, I developed a wandering eye. My mother had learned to mountain bike at the age of 69, the only grandma in a women’s clinic I had coached three years before. She owned a sweet mountain bike of her own, but she offered to buy the Anthem. It would help me afford my next ride, which, in the natural order of bikes, cost twice what I paid for the Anthem. And there was something special about this old bike, a ticket to so many milestones. It ought to stay in the family. The Anthem became Mom’s “race car,” even though she felt more comfortable on her heavier, squishier bike, which she lovingly called “my Cadillac.” It was fun riding side by side with the bike that had carried me so far. It still caused a little flutter in my chest. Meanwhile, in what seems like a time-lapse movie, my little boy grew into (and out of) a series of bikes, each fancier than the last. His balance bike, a potty-training prize, was replaced by a hand-medown pedal-bike with coaster brakes and 12-inch wheels. The third one, with hand brakes and 16-inch wheels, he had to earn. He “paid” by presenting the bike shop owner a painstakingly handwritten list of 20 chores he did all by himself.
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The next one was a mountain bike with front shocks and 24-inch wheels. And then a 20-inch BMX that saw him through his first real race. Competitions began with the national anthem as riders paraded around the track. As the littlest one, he sometimes got to carry the flag. My boy won some races. Others he lost. He eventually lost count of both. But the ups and downs, like the track itself, taught him things about racing—and living. How to look ahead. How to tuck and roll. How to crash and quickly get back up and finish the job without tears. The Anthem waited silently in a corner of his grandma’s garage. One day the boy dragged it out. He was too short to swing a leg over. When we lifted him into the saddle, his feet didn’t reach the pedals. Then, one day, they did.
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K IM A ND A U S T IN G E T R E A D Y T O R ID E T HE A N T HE M AT T HE L O C A L B IK E PA R K .
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E WA S 11 YE A R S O LD. FI F TH G R A D E . A YE A R AWAY FRO M
racing on his middle-school mountain bike team. With the saddle nearly touching the top tube, the Anthem fit, sort of. Mom traded it back in exchange for a titanium road bike, a used beauty I’d bought for $500. The silvery frame matched the metal screws in her arm from a mountain-bike crash at age 72. Set up on a trainer in her living room, the road bike sat, like art, while her Cadillac cruised the trails. The Anthem went to her grandson. He didn’t care that it was a women’s bike, or that it had been his grandma’s. It was lighter and faster and better than any other bike he’d ever owned. “We need to make it his,” my husband said.
Together they took it apart piece by piece and rebuilt it with shiny new parts. The reinvention began with the silver-green frame. Wearing nine years of dings and scuffs, it needed fresh paint. My son chose to powder-coat it matte black. They replaced the rear shock with a newer one and rebuilt the fork, still a gleaming white but tattooed with battle scars. They upgraded the brakes and converted the double chainring to a single that powered an 11-gear cassette. They bought a sleeker saddle and a carbon-fiber handlebar. They agonized over choosing the perfect tires and converted the wheels to tubeless. The final touch—the boy’s choice—was a royal blue Giant sticker kit to replace the covered-up logo. The stickers had a bit of shine, a subtle contrast with the matte black frame. The reincarnation was complete. My son was 12 when he wheeled the Anthem to the starting line of his first big race—a time trial. The race director handed the mic to my husband, the league director. Even through the buzz of the speakers, I could hear the catch in his voice as he counted down the seconds. “Five…four…three…two…one…” The Anthem, by now, was a decade old, which in mountain-bike years means ancient. But it ripped down the trail and tore up hills. It passed bike after bike with carbon-fiber frames and dropper posts and 29-inch wheels. With my boy in the cockpit, it flew again. The last stretch before the finish line was a painfully steep grassy hill. Some kids got off and pushed. The chute was a ruckus of coaches, teams, and camera-phone-wielding parents. I was one of them. My son was small for his age, and shy. But on the bike, a quiet intensity emerged. He attacked the hill in a standing climb, pumping the bars from side to side. So fierce. My heart nearly burst with vicarious joy—and pain. He crossed the finish line with a sixth-place time. One spot shy of the podium. The next race, he finished fourth. At the awards ceremony, he stepped shyly onto the podium, where my husband, hiding tears behind sunglasses, placed a medal around his neck. The boy raised his hands to the sky.
Cour tesy Kim Cross (first race)
L
AST YEAR THE BIKE TURNED 11 YEARS OLD AND MY SON BECAME
a teenager. He built Adirondack chairs and planter boxes to earn a faster race bike. He chose a 24-pound hardtail with 29-inch wheels and a fork with a remote lock-out. The Anthem, though, wasn’t done. We sawed off the seatpost and slammed the saddle all the way down. My son and I bought full-face helmets and spent hours together at the bike park, learning how to ride dirt jumps, wall rides, and scary wooden ramps. We practiced wheelies in our neighborhood and manuals at the pump track. One day my son looked at the Anthem and said, “You know, Mom, that geometry looks a lot like a slopestyle bike.” It isn’t, of course. It’s an old cross-country bike that has become whatever we needed. It reminds me of The Giving Tree, a children’s book that slays me. The tree gives her boy a place to climb and leaves to weave into a crown. When he needs money, she says, “Take my apples, Boy, and sell them in the city.” When he needs a house, she offers her branches for lumber. He grows old and sad and longs to sail away. “Cut down my trunk,” she says, “and make a boat.” We looked into turning the Anthem into a slopestyle bike. Maybe there was some newfangled fork that would slacken the head-tube angle. Maybe we could pump the rear shock to the max to stiffen the back end. Maybe this 11-year-old bike could keep flying in new ways. Some mechanics thought it was possible, but others warned of the
A U S T IN AT A G E 1 2 R IDING T HE A N T HE M IN HI S F IR S T B IG R A C E .
dangers. Under the force of big jumps and hard landings, this bike could fail. Someone could get really hurt. “If you start bombing on that bike, you’ll outride it,” said a friend, a former pro team mechanic. “I think it’s a bad idea. Sorry.” My son and I bought dirt jumpers. Maybe the Anthem had finally reached the end of its winding road. According to Bicycle Blue Book, it was worth around $450. Maybe, our friend suggested, we should donate it. It could be some kid’s first bike. The Giving Tree is nothing more than a stump when the boy comes back to see her. He is old and tired. The tree is sad to tell him she has nothing left to give. “I am just an old stump,” she says. “I am sorry…” “I don’t need very much now,” he says. “Just a quiet place to sit and rest.” We can’t bring ourselves to give it up, this bike that keeps on giving. We bought a spare rear wheel with a racing slick and set it up on a trainer. It carried us through an Idaho winter, through the loneliness of quarantine. It’s been years since my son has seen his best friend, who now lives in a different time zone. One day, the boys logged into Zwift and my son got back on the Anthem. In the land of pixels, side by side and 2,000 miles apart, they pedaled together again.
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THE
TRANSFORMATIVE POWER
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BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 4 | 2021
OF THE
TEST ELIMINATE WORKOUT ANXIETY, DIAL IN YOUR NUTRITION, AND MAKE EVERY HARD EFFORT FEEL EASIER By D AV I D L I P S C O M B , B I C Y C L I N G M E M B E R S H I P C O A C H
Photography by T R E V O R R A A B
FTP
IN 2010, NICK PAGLIA LOOKED IN THE MIRROR AND SAW A TIRED, HEAVY FACE. He didn’t like the weight he’d gained or how it made him feel. Inspired to change, Nick grabbed his dusty mountain bike and went out for his first ride in a decade. He’s barely stopped pedaling since. After Nick’s best cyclocross season, in 2017, he was sidelined by a herniated disc for six months and began to reevaluate his training methods. Postinjury, Nick rejoined my Monday night Back-to-Work ride (a.k.a. #bringthewatts) on Zwift. The BTW ride focuses on sustained, fast-paced, and race-simulating power. It teaches riders how to pace a long, difficult effort and builds their functional threshold power (FTP), or the average power they can sustain for an hour. I’m a huge fan of using FTP efforts in training. By 34
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riding the razor’s edge of how hard you can push, you not only train your legs and lungs, but you also teach yourself to pace and meter out the hardest efforts. I connected with Nick through my Zwift ride, and he realized his singleminded focus on raising his power, with no attention to mobility or core strength, wasn’t going to cut the mustard if he wanted to improve without getting injured again. That’s when he joined CIS Training Systems, my coaching company. Like many programs, the CIS system bases athletes’ workout efforts on their latest FTP tests—typically performed every four to eight weeks. This is going to ruffle some feathers, but at CIS, we train our athletes specifically to take the FTP test. At 13 weeks into Nick’s training, I programmed a three-week block of six FTP tests, twice per week on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a 90-minute ride (no rest day) on Wednesdays. If this sounds intense, hear me out: I believe riders need to practice FTP tests to perform them at their best. It’s just like taking prep tests before the SATs, and it’s also why I focus my BTW ride on FTP efforts. For long-term training and workout programming, this practice helps athletes consistently hit their potential on FTP tests and establish a more reliable training benchmark—there’s no questioning whether they should or could have gone harder. The high and regular frequency of the six tests also gives riders the opportunity to learn about what prerace or hard workout protocols set them up for success, as well as how they can best recover to ride hard again in 48 hours. And while it’s not the main purpose, six FTP tests will always bring more watts by the end. For many of my athletes, like Nick, the block of tests is transformative. Too many cyclists freak out ahead of an FTP test because of the word “test.” That anxiety can raise their heart rate and hurt the result, but through this block, riders become better mentally and emotionally prepared to work hard. Repeating the FTP test six times in three weeks gives athletes the structure, process, and confidence to get through it every time. “That first week of FTP tests was scary,” Nick told me. “But I felt a sense of accomplishment and then asked what I could do better.” The following weeks gave him the opportunity to find the exact gearing and cadence (92 rpm) his body preferred; he dialed in a larger-than-usual dinner the night before; and he developed a stretching and foam-rolling routine to prep his legs for that second effort of the week. “As the tests went on, I saw my heart rate come down significantly. I was controlling my breathing, I got my nutrition worked out, and I was also getting stronger,” Nick said. “What I learned on FTP tests has translated to everything, even long rides. My body position is better. I can relax more on efforts. I’m comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s taught me to be smarter on the bike.” This mind-set change, embracing discomfort and difficult efforts, has made Nick more motivated for the upcoming fall cyclocross season. “I used to find excuses to skip hard days,” said Nick. “Now, no matter how busy I am, I find ways to make them happen.” With the six-test block behind him, Nick performs an FTP test every three months to assess his progress. “I look forward to it, and I don’t care about the number now,” he says. “Well I do care about the number, but I know it will show progress.” Before I get into the details of the test, understand that while FTP is an important measure of current fitness and an incredible training tool, it is not the metric, nor does it define your total fitness. The result is just a snapshot in time. Approach these tests as measurements in your overall cycling résumé. Don’t get overwhelmed, and have fun with it. Turn the page for a deeper dive into preparing for, executing, and recovering from an FTP test.
Most indoor cycling apps, including Zwift, Peloton, and TrainerRoad, can guide you through an FTP test.
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FTP WHAT IS A 20-MINUTE FTP TEST? The goal is to sustain the highest workload you can achieve for the duration, and your score is simply your average watts. It sounds basic, but the FTP test is one of the most misunderstood training tools in the cycling world. It’s not a complete measure of one’s ability. It’s not a value to be compared to others. It’s simply a marker of your fitness at that time. Two riders with the same FTP for their weight can have vastly different results in a race because there are many other physical and mental performance factors. That said, an FTP test is the best benchmark for tracking your fitness and the work that you’ve done. It is a point of reference to determine if your training is working, where you want to go, and how you want to get there.
HOW TO PERFORM AN FTP TEST WARM-UP
Start with a three-part, 20-minute warm-up:
THE TEST
For your first FTP test, gauge your effort by your rate of perceived exertion (RPE), a 1–10 scale with 1 being an effortless spin and 10 being an all-out sprint. Cool down post-test with 10 to 20 minutes of easy pedaling followed by five minutes of your favorite lower-body stretches.
I also break the test up into three sections.
1 0:00–07:00: Easy spin, slowly increasing effort (RPE 2 to 4). 2 7:01–14:00: Steadily ramp up to RPE of 8 out of 10 (or 115% of your last FTP)
and hold that 8 RPE effort for one minute. 3 14:01–20:00: Recovery spin (RPE 2 to 3), hydrate.
1 0:00–2:00: Start at an RPE of 7 to 8 (or 110% of your last FTP).
2:01–10:00: Settle into your pace and hold it there. 10:01–10:30: At this midpoint, take 15 to 30 seconds to drop to around 60 rpm while increasing resistance to maintain your power. This will lower your heart rate and provide a mental break. 2 10:31–17:00: Bring your RPMs back up and cruise at 7 RPE. This section is the
hardest. It’ll push your mental toughness. Focus on maintaining your cadence, while staying relaxed. 3 17:01–20:00: Empty the tank and aim for 8 to 9 RPE or about 15 to 30 watts higher
than you’ve been averaging (or 106 to 109% of your last FTP). Finish strong!
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HOW TO
Deal With Lackluster FTP Results Give yourself leeway and look at it as an opportunity for you to improve on for your next FTP test. Nick, now an FTP testing veteran, recently shared this sound advice:
“If I were disappointed with a result, I would look at it and ask, where did I have an opportunity to do better? Maybe I didn’t have a great night’s sleep, or maybe my nutrition was off the night before my test. I believe that dreams without goals just fuel disappointment. But if you examine your result in the context of information—whether you like it or not— that can help you reach your goal. Remember, you can be better tomorrow than you were today.”
TEST-TAKING STRATEGIES FOR NEW AND EXPERIENCED RIDERS Approach FTP tests like any physical test or race: rested and focused. Developing your protocol—everything you do before, during, and after the test—allows you to measure yourself as accurately as possible by minimizing the variables and reducing anxiety going into it. This makes your test results more accurate for comparison.
NOVICE
INTERMEDIATE
ADVANCED
When attempting your first FTP test, focus on adequate rest and tapering:
After a few tests, fine-tune your approach, looking at these critical areas:
• Three days before the test, take the day off to recover.
• Write down a plan for your process leading up to and for performing the test. That includes nutrition, what time of day you perform best, and how you will use your cadence and heart rate to control the effort.
Top athletes dial in the mental aspect of taking the test—digging deeper within themselves to show every ounce of what they’re capable of. Mental strategies include:
•Sleep! Get as much as possible, starting two nights out. • Two days before, add a 3- to 5-minute interval at an RPE of 7 out of 10 to an easy 60-minute spin. This will prime your legs and teach your brain how an FTPeffort feels. • Take your nutrition seriously in these 48 hours (see “Eating for the FTP Test,” at right). • One day out, take an easy 60-minute spin at 90-plus rpm. • Use the first two minutes to find your rhythm, ideally with a cadence between 87 and 95 rpm.
• During the test, focus on controlling your mind and body to perform the test—not just survive it. You want to experience the test, examining how you mentally and physically react to the 20 minutes. • Reflect on how your body reacted to the unique conditions (there are always some variables) on the test, and take note of them.
• Pay attention to the details, minimize distractions, control what you can, and do not deviate from the plan. • Demonstrate consistent drive, confidence, and focus while adjusting effort throughout the test. • Perform to the best of your ability and have patience and pride in your accomplishment, be it good or bad. • When you feel yourself fading, forcefully exhale like you’re blowing all the air out of your lungs. The next breath you take will be fuller and deeper. This acts as a mental reset.
EATING FOR THE FTP TEST THE DAY BEFORE Carbohydrate-focused meals 24 to 48 hours before the test will ensure glycogen stores are full and primed for peak performance. Get most of your carbs from complex sources, such as whole grains, sweet potatoes, or beans. Carbohydrate-rich drinks in the form of low-fat, low-fiber fruit smoothies can provide extra carbohydrates without increasing the likelihood of feeling bloated. An ideal meal is still balanced with healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, and lean protein. SAMPLE MEAL: Six ounces of lean protein such as chicken breast, fish, lean cuts of beef, eggs, or minimally processed tofu; 1 cup of cooked grains such as quinoa, couscous, brown or wild rice, oats, beans, or sweet potatoes; 1 cup of vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, peas, or collard greens; and 1 cup of fruit, such as apples, oranges, berries, or pears.
THE DAY OF Worked into (not in addition to) your normal meals for the day, consume a high-carbohydrate, low-protein, low-fat, and low-fiber meal three hours before the workout. Protein and fat are slow to digest and will decrease the rate your carbohydrates digest as well. Closer to the FTP test, you may want to have a small snack—fruit, juice, sports drink, or a handful of dried cereal—to top off glycogen stores. SAMPLE MEAL: ¹ ₂ cup oatmeal with milk and fruit; and toast with jam, or low-fat yogurt with fruit and granola.
POST-TEST Immediately after you get off the bike, eat a balanced meal with carbohydrates to refill depleted glycogen stores and protein to help muscle recovery. SAMPLE MEAL: Six ounces of lean protein; ¹ ₂ cup of cooked grains, beans, or sweet potatoes; 1 cup of fruit; and 1 cup of vegetables such as broccoli, spinach, peas, or collard greens.
Source: Nick Reichert, CIS Fitness and Nutrition Coach
OLYMPIC THESE WOMEN ARE AMERICAN CYCLING’S BEST HOPE FOR
GOLD With the Tokyo Olympics rescheduled to this summer, we’ve had an extra year to get fired up for one of the rare, magic times when bike racing is actually on TV. Sure, we can always catch the occasional road classic streaming at 3 a.m. on some buggy, unreliable app. But how often do we get to see multiple cycling disciplines—mountain biking, track, road, and BMX—broadcast on regular channels at non-ridiculous hours so that millions of Americans can watch? This year there’s a good chance the U.S. women’s team will top the Olympic podium in several events, giving diehard cycling fans and rookie viewers alike even more reasons to get stoked. Here’s who to watch if you want to see the U.S. bring home gold. // by Caitlin Giddings
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W IL L OUGHB Y P R A C T IC E S AT T HE OLY MP IC T R A INING C E N T E R IN C HUL A V I S TA , C A , IN L AT E 2 0 1 9 .
ALISE WILLOUGHBY S P O R T : BMX race | A G E : 30 H O M E T O W N : St. Cloud, MN
Two-time World Champ BMX racer Alise Willoughby has dreamed of being an Olympic bike racer since she was in elementary school. She first realized her goal in 2012, when she placed 12th in London. Four years later, she brought home a silver medal in Rio. She’s spent all of the past year training with her coach and husband, former BMX pro Sam Willoughby. Get ready to watch her fly out of the gate this year in Tokyo. HOW SHE’ S DE ALT WITH THE E VE NT S OF THE PAST YEAR: Once I moved past the initial shock
of the Olympics being pushed back and had some time off to reset, I looked at the extra time as an opportunity to work with Sam on identifying things that may have been overlooked and how we could better my preparation plan for Tokyo 2021. The biggest change for me over the past year was the simple fact of not traveling so much for training or competition. If anything, the extra time has made me more excited for the chance to compete on the world stage again! H OW S H E G OT I N TO R AC I N G B M X : I started
Cour tesy Steve Diamond
racing when I was 6 years old. I grew up with two older brothers, and one of them brought me along to the BMX track to race with him. The first time, I was too scared to actually do the race. The next week I came back and went for it. I had a little fall, but I was fine. That opened up my eyes that it’s OK to fall; you can just get up. After I got over that initial fear of going down the big starting hill, I was addicted. H A R D E ST R AC E S H E ’ S E V E R DO N E : One race
that comes to mind is when my mom was really sick with cancer. It was one of my last races before she passed away in January 2014. My
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head wasn’t there. I did end up winning the race weekend, but I don’t know how. H E R S EC R E T W E A P O N : I’m known for quick
C OUR T NE Y C OMP E T E S AT T HE C A P OL I V E R I L E G E ND C UP IN I TA LY IN A P R IL 2 0 2 1 .
starts, so my acceleration down the first straight. In BMX we train for that like sprinters (in short: moving heavy weights fast). I think having a g ymnastics background helped me in the beginning. I’ve also developed a tough mental game. Sam likes to call me “battle-tested,” which is something that comes with life experience. I work with a sports psychologist and have spent a lot of time working on my mental strength since my mom passed away. A N I M A L T H AT B E S T R E P R E S E N T S H E R R AC E ST YLE: A cheetah! I spent my childhood pre-
tending to be a cheetah because they’re so fast. I even put milk in a saucer and drank it like a cat when I was little. It was super-weird. P U M P - U P S O N G : “Coming Home” by
Diddy is a good one to enter a stadium to. Also anything by Pink—Pink is my girl. BEST BMX ADVICE: Just enjoy riding your bike
as a kid. As the level of the sport rises—especially now that it’s in the Olympic Games— some parents want to groom their kids as athletes. But I think there’s value in going with the flow and letting a kid start racing at their own pace and enjoy riding. Learn to win, learn to lose, just spend hours on your bike doing whatever. H E R R AC E M A NTR A : During my mom’s fight
against cancer, she’d always say to me, “Never ever give up.” It sounds cliché and simple, but when I’ve wanted to throw in the towel, it’s helped me stay motivated. WHY SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH THE SPORT: First,
I love the head-to-head competition and the thrill of the race. Second, BMX is such a family sport. My family spent so many hours together at the track in St. Cloud volunteering. I love that social community side of it.
coach, and we both have Olympic silver medals, so we’re putting all our eggs in me taking home gold in Tokyo. Outside of BMX my biggest goal is to inspire others to not only take up riding bikes for fun, but also overcome tough obstacles in their daily lives. Both Sam and I have had a rocky road [a 2016 training crash left Sam paralyzed from the waist down], and I think people can draw some positivity and light from what we’ve been through and shared.
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Michele Mondini
U LT I M AT E G O A L : My husband, Sam, is my
K ATE COURTNEY H E R S E C R E T W E A P O N : Consistency. I train S P O R T : Mountain biking | A G E : 25 H O M E T O W N : San Francisco
Raised in California at the base of Mount Tamalpais, known as “the birthplace of modern mountain biking,” Kate Courtney seemed destined for dirt stardom from an early age. She captured her first junior MTB World Cup series win in 2012, at age 17. At 22, she moved up to the elite field and brought home the rainbow jersey at her first World Championship race—the first American world champion of the sport in almost two decades. The following year, she crushed the field to win the 2019 Elite World Cup series title. The Olympic podium is next on her checklist—and she’s headed to Tokyo feeling focused and hopeful.
really consistently and use a lot of data in my training, and you can see that in my performances, year over year and throughout the season. I haven’t changed any of that for the Olympic year—I’m still just checking those boxes and staying focused. THE ANIMAL THAT BEST REPRESENTS HER RACE ST YLE: I’m a shark: swim, lurk, attack. PUMP- UP SONG : Anything by Beyoncé. B E S T A DV I C E : Take it one step at a time. In
cycling there are so many ways to improve and challenge yourself, but that can also be overwhelming. Take it one little piece at a time and continue to find ways to make progress. WORST ADVICE: That harder is always better.
HOW SHE’ S DE ALT WITH THE E VE NT S OF THE PA S T Y E A R : This year has been marked by
adaptability and finding silver linings in extra time at home with my family. It’s also been a great opportunity for me to focus on training and continue to work toward my Olympic goals. Luckily, I was able to continue to train outside and set up a gym at my house for strength work. I am heading into the Olympic year feeling relaxed, focused, and more grateful than ever for the opportunity to line up to race. ON AIMING FOR THE OLYMPICS: The moment
I realized how important qualifying for Tokyo would be to me was when I didn’t qualify for the 2016 Games. The disappointment of not making the cut really illuminated to me how special the Olympics are and how important that goal was.
People are always going too hard on group rides and trying to push themselves every single day in training. But as an athlete your job is to perform at peak levels on certain days at certain times. So for me that has meant a big focus on recovery and letting my easy days be easy. MOST EXCITING THING IN WOMEN’ S C YCLING RIGHT NOW: Last year, my answer would have
been that for the first time in a very long time, the U.S. women were ranked first in the world in mountain biking. With the pandemic and subsequent race cancellations in the U.S., our team ranking is unfortunately a different story this year. Regardless of the numbers, I still think the resurgence of mountain biking talent in the U.S. is one of the most exciting things. It took a lot of camaraderie, teamwork, and strong results among the USA women to put us in first place.
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I THINK YOU CAN LEARN SO MUCH BY PUTTING YOURSELF IN ALL TYPES OF SITUATIONS. YOU LEARN WHAT YOU LIKE AND WHAT YOU DON’T LIKE, AND WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT AND WHAT YOU’RE NOT.
Jennifer Valente S P O R T : Track cycling | A G E : 26 E V E N T S : Omnium, team pursuit H O M E T O W N : San Diego
Jennifer Valente started racing on the San Diego velodrome after taking a youth class when she was 14. In the three years after that, she won a Junior World Championship title in the scratch race and found a spot on the 2012 Olympic Long Team.
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Tokyo will be her second Olympics—she brought home silver in 2016 as part of a team pursuit that included Chloé Dygert. HOW SHE’ S DE ALT WITH THE E VE NT S OF THE PA ST YEAR : Learning to be flexible with just
about everything has been a big factor in staying motivated and focused. Last summer and fall, Covid restrictions altered training quite a bit. Gyms and the velodrome were closed off-and-on in my area, so there was a lot of time spent on my road bike or on a
Casey B. Gibson ( Valente)
VA L E N T E C OMP E T E S AT T HE 2 0 2 0 UC I T R A C K C Y C L ING W OR L D C H A MP ION S HIP S IN B E R L IN .
sports; I stuck with cycling because it was something my brothers hadn’t picked. We’re all pretty competitive, so it was best for us to play different sports! WHAT SHE LOVES MOST ABOUT CYCLING : One
of my favorite feelings is that of riding fast on a banked track and feeling my body push into each bend. FAVORITE EVENT: I love mass-start, or “bunch,”
racing, where everyone starts at the same time. In the Olympics, that’s the omnium and the madison. That’s what drew me to cycling in the first place. There are so many things happening at the same time, so it’s not just “the strongest wins” or “the fastest wins” or the most experienced or smartest wins. It’s a combination of all those things. And all those things have to line up, so the same 24 athletes could place in a different order, depending on the day. H A R D E S T R A C E S H E ’ S E V E R D O N E : I don’t
know, but I know it wasn’t hard because of the course or competition. A lot of times races are hard based on other factors, like what was going on with my life at the time, or what was going on around me, or what happened with the equipment. HER SECRET WEAPON: The amount of support
we have around our team. There are people every day in my corner that I owe everything to, who continue to push and motivate us. My coach, my family, and my friends have all been steadfast. We rely so heavily on the USAC staff, the gym coach, and the people we work with day in and day out who deserve more recognition. BEST TR ACK ADVICE: Race everything. I grew
Tim de Waele/Getty Images (Armstrong)
trainer. Most of our team has been together since the New Year and we have been able to get some track time, so each week is starting to feel more and more like the Olympics are right around the corner. HOW SHE GOT INTO TR ACK R ACING: My broth-
ers and I took the kids’ class at the San Diego velodrome, and I stuck with it. We all grew up riding mountain bikes and BMX bikes around the neighborhood. Having the kids’ class at the velodrome showed me that track cycling was a sport and you could do it the way other people do Little League or soccer. As we got older, my brothers and I picked different
up racing on Tuesday nights in San Diego, and every week it was a different thing—sprints and keirins, points racing, sometimes even a random snowball race they made up. I think you can learn so much by putting yourself in all types of situations. You learn what you like and what you don’t like and what you’re good at and what you’re not, and if those don’t line up, you learn what you can work on. WHAT’S NEXT FOR HER AFTER TOKYO: I’m going
back to school full-time after the Olympics. I’m at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, studying mechanical engineering, so I’m just going to focus on finishing my academic goals.
WHY ARE AMERICAN WOMEN SO GOOD AT THE OLYMPICS? Women’s cycling events are still relatively new to the Olympic program. The first women’s Olympic road race began in 1984—72 years and 15 Games after the men’s race became a recurring event in 1912. Women’s track cycling was even later to the program, making its debut in the 1988 Games with the individual sprint, and building out most of its current events in 2012. That was around the time women began to pull ahead of the men in medal count, with Kristin Armstrong and Sarah Hammer winning multiple gold and silver medals on the road and track. So why have U.S. women been so dominant? “Success breeds more success,” says Kim Geist, a cycling coach and two-time World Champ in the team pursuit. Geist says when women’s track cycling events like the team pursuit were first introduced in 2012, the U.S. prioritized those events, setting the bar high and seeing quick results. That triggered momentum that continues to build. Women’s developmental programs like Team TWENTY20 have also started paying off, creating more pathways to Olympic victory. “It doesn’t happen overnight,” says owner Nicola Cranmer of the successes of the team, founded in 2005. “You take a rider like Chloé—her ‘overnight success’ was on the track, but she was being developed since age 15 as part of our program.” Leaders have been proactive in finding and cultivating young talent. But there are also some harsh realities behind the U.S. women’s Olympic success. With fewer race opportunities and fewer big road contracts for women than for men, the Games are a comparatively bigger showcase of their skills and talents.
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YOU CAN BE AS TALENTED AS YOU WANT, AND YOU STILL HAVE TO WORK HARD TO MAINTAIN THAT TALENT AND MAKE IT ACTUALLY WORK. HOW SHE’ S DE ALT WITH THE E VE NT S OF THE PAST YEAR: I’ve spent the past year in hospital
beds, in a wheelchair, on crutches, in PT clinics, on my dad’s couch, on treadmills, on my trainer, and now back on the road riding my Canyon. At the time of the crash it was unknown if I was going to be able to make it to the Games. I am grateful to all those who have helped me and stood with me throughout. They’re the reason I will make it. HER THOUGHTS ON BEING DESCRIBED AS A “NATUR AL”: It’s funny: Winning world cham-
pionships and winning big races—it’s almost as if I’m expecting it now. But you can be as talented as you want, and you still have to work hard to maintain that talent and make it actually work. HER SECRET WEAPON : Mental toughness. You
CHLOÉ DYGERT S P O R T : Track cycling, road cycling A G E : 24 | E V E N T S : Team pursuit,
individual time trial, road race H O M E T O W N : Brownsburg, IN
Known for her blistering sprint and fierce, competitive spirit, Olympic silver medalist and 10-time World Champ Chloé Dygert has had an eventful run-up to Tokyo. Last year, fresh
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off setting the world record in a non-Olympic event—the individual pursuit—at the 2020 Track Cycling World Championships in Berlin, Dygert crashed during her time trial at the 2020 UCI Road World Championships. She sustained a severe leg injury that threatened to derail not only her Olympic plans, but her entire cycling career. She also drew criticism for “liking” racist and transphobic messages on Twitter. [When Bicycling requested an interview for this story, Dygert’s representatives said she was not doing any media. She did, however, eventually respond to some questions about racing.] Since then, she’s gotten back on her bike, signed on to the CanyonSRAM UCI Women’s World Tour team, and is now gearing up for the Games.
BEST ADVICE: Set your standards high. At the
2020 Track World Championships, I set the World Record, but I still didn’t get the time I wanted. PROUDEST VICTORY: Every race I’ve won, I can
pick out something I’m upset about. My Worlds time trial performance in 2019 was one of my favorite wins, but there are still things I could have done better. F A V O R I T E E V E N T: The time trial. It’s all
me—100 percent focused, all out, everything you have. There’s no excuse. I love that. U LTI M ATE G OA L : I want to go to the next six
Olympic games, and I’d like to win one more medal than Kristin Armstrong at the Olympics. She has three, I want four. [Dygert currently has one.]
Matt Trappe
DYGERT WE ARS T HE L E A DE R ’ S JE R S E Y AT T HE 2 0 1 9 C OL OR A D O C L A S S IC .
can win or lose a race by the way you act on the start line. There are mind games you can play with people if they don’t have a strong head.
HANNAH ROBERTS S P O R T : BMX freestyle | A G E : 19 H O M E T O W N : Buchanan, MI
As 2020 world champion, Hannah Roberts will take on the Olympic debut of the BMX freestyle event. Roberts began riding at age 9 and started competing in 2012, inspired by her cousin, BMX pro Brett Banasiewicz. A powerhouse rider who does backflips just to warm up, Roberts wowed the field when she became the first woman to nail the 360 Tailwhip in competition—a move where she spins in a full circle while the back of the bike does a full rotation around the bars. ON AIMING FOR THE OLYMPICS: I always had a
dream to be an Olympian when I was young, but once I left organized sports and settled on BMX, I dropped that because it wasn’t an Olympic sport. When it was announced freestyle BMX would be at Tokyo for the first
time in 2020, it was crazy—the whole thing has been super life-changing and so much more motivational for my riding. Knowing I had a chance pushed me a lot further than I was pushing myself. ANIMAL THAT REPRESENTS HER R ACE ST YLE :
I’m pretty focused when I’m competing, but outside of competition it would probably be a koala. I spend a lot of time sleeping.
If you do it on the right ramp with speed, it just feels so good and controlled. R ACE STR ATEGY: I tell myself to go in and have
a good solid run that I can look back and feel happy for rather than trying to win the event. So the contest becomes more like a goal list of tricks than a calculated plan of what’s going to get me in first. That’s why I did the 360 Tailwhip—I’d never done one in a contest and wanted to, so I knew I was going to start my run with that, even if I fell. O N T H E S TAT E O F WO M E N ’ S B M X : So many
HER SECRET WEAPON : I’m always able to find
the fun in whatever we’re doing. Even when everyone is stressed out, I just make jokes. WORST ADVICE: I’ve heard people tell younger
kids they have to learn something new every time they ride. That’s not true. As long as you’re doing what you enjoy, that’s what BMX is about. FAV O R I T E T R I C K : My favorite trick of the
moment is a Backflip Barspin [where the rider rotates the bars while performing a backflip].
women are getting involved, and it’s really stepping up the game. You can’t just go to a contest and do a few tricks and win—you have to have a really solid run and be clean, and then it’s all up to the judges. H OW S H E F E E L S W H E N S H E ’ S I N TH E A I R : It
feels like forever, though you know exactly how much time you have to do your trick. It’s an amazing feeling you can’t get anywhere else, like the adrenaline rush from a roller coaster, but you’re in control of it. That’s why I do it.
Atsushi Tomura /Getty Images
R OB E R T S C OMP E T E S AT T HE 2 0 1 9 UC I BMX FREEST YLE PA R K W OR L D C UP IN HIR O S HIM A , J A PA N .
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By Jada Jackson Photography by Nancy M. Musinguzi
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remember passing a group of guys, and one looked over and said, “Wow, I’ve never seen you guys out here on bikes before. I thought you guys just played rap music and basketball,” and I said, “No, we ride bicycles, too,” and we just rode away from them. That gave me my first impression of rural Minnesota’s bicycling community—it was lily white. They had never seen anybody of color until they saw the two of us out there that day, literally.
2 How has your club served as a connection point for cyclists? / When we started the bike club, it was predominantly African American. We did that deliberately because we were trying to get people active and get them involved. But the club has attracted Caucasian people over the years, as well. In fact, we have quite a few in the club now, and I think that probably was a great connection with the community. A lot of folks in Minnesota consider themselves liberal, consider themselves accepting, consider themselves to be people who quote unquote aren’t prejudiced, although they probably don’t even know they are. These people have had an opportunity to spend time with others, to socialize, to do a lot of other things, and I think that connection has made not just the bike club successful but it has enhanced our reputation throughout the whole metropolitan area.
2 What are some of the barriers that you see young Black
Longtime bike advocate Louis Moore is intimately familiar with both of these aspects of the city’s legacy, and where they intersect. As a champion of bike infrastructure and one of the founders of the Major Taylor Bicycling Club of Minnesota, an organization dedicated to promoting bikes in the Black communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, he talked with Bicycling about their mission, the roadblocks he’s faced, and how he’s been inspired by their namesake champion cyclist.
2 How have you infused cycling with activism over the years that you’ve been in the sport? / Well, I’ll start out by saying my house is located six blocks from the corner where George Floyd was killed. Last summer, we did a ride and came back through the memorial and took a picture that we distributed nationwide through Facebook to let people know that Major Taylor is in full support of justice for George Floyd. That is an intersection that I had been going through for 50 years, and would go through every Wednesday or Saturday for a club ride. [The intersection is now blocked off with memorials.] To have that happen in the community that I live in and not be able to even go through that area anymore has been very difficult for me. We’re doing what we can to educate people about what happened and about what’s going on there now, and we’ll continue to do that, but we want to make sure that people understand that this was a very tragic situation that should’ve never happened, and that this is not a true reflection of Minneapolis.
2 As a Black cyclist, do you feel like you’ve been racially profiled? / Yeah, it’s definitely an issue. The first year that we were cycling as a club, we had some very loud, screaming, yellow jerseys, which we deliberately got because we wanted to make sure everybody saw us. We were riding down one of the main thoroughfares over here, Park Avenue. We stopped at a light and one of Minneapolis’s finest rode up alongside of us. He rolled down the window and said, “What is this?” and I said, “Well, this is the Major Taylor Bicycling Club.” He looked for about 30 seconds, then he said, “Well, that’s a different kind of gang,” and rolled up the window. The light changed, and he and the officer in the car started laughing and drove off. So, we already had a pretty good idea of what people thought of us. If the police thought of us in that way, what do you think other people were thinking? When I was doing some bike racing in the ’80s and early ’90s, I did a one-day race across Minnesota—120 or 130 miles. There were two of us Black cyclists riding together, and I
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cyclists facing? / The biggest barrier is probably the purchase of a road bike—being able to get a bike that’s efficient, but affordable. The other part is really changing your mind-set. A lot of Black folks never really got involved in a sport like this because it’s very physically taxing. You have to really put out a lot of strength, energy, a lot of watts when you ride. It’s a sport that keeps you in shape, and convincing people of the benefits of that is difficult. It’s hard sometimes to convince them that they could really be good at this, starting at a young age. There’s been a lot of success nationwide with Black cyclists like Rahsaan Bahati out in California, who started racing on the track when he was 11, and now he’s one of the premier bike racers in the country. The Williams brothers, who were part of Major Taylor in L.A., are the same situation—they started as youngsters, and they’ve all made careers out of it.
2 What advice would you give to young Black people? / The first thing I would say is get an education. In today’s society, you’re dealing with all these high-tech jobs…you have to understand those systems, you have to understand how they work, you have to understand how to be a part of them. The other part is, I think it’s important for them to understand that the things that they do, whether they’re on the job or whether they’re on the street, have a reflection on the community as a whole, and that is important. We’re always going to be…I’m not going to say second-class, but we’re all always going to be looked down upon. Take a look at the political system in the last four years. I don’t need to even mention a name, but you look at the amount of folks that voted for him, 74 million this last election, and you know that white America has a long way to go to understand what’s going on in the Black community and what’s going on with Black folks. It’s extremely important that they do, and I think because of the Floyd issue that has come to light. I mean, I am just overwhelmed by the worldwide response to what happened to George Floyd.
2 Right now, what are some of the things that you’re working on? / In the club, we have noticed a large influx of African American
L OUI S MO OR E H A S B E E N A C Y C L I S T IN MINNE A P OL I S F OR MOR E T H A N 5 0 Y E A R S .
women. We have six or seven members in our club. There’s a lot of ladies now in the African American community that are beginning to love cycling. I had the privilege of going to Selma, Alabama, last year, in February, for the ride from Selma to Montgomery. We celebrated the Civil Rights march that Martin Luther King led. So I had an opportunity to ride with a lot of Black female cyclists, and it’s great to see that they ride, that they are physically fit, and that they are enthusiastic about doing it.
2 How has Major Taylor inspired you? / His story is quite interesting because of when he raced—the late 1800s. He was the only Black racer on the circuit, and he would spend most of his time staying out front to avoid the white riders in the rear who were constantly trying to knock him off his bike, fence him in, run him into the rail—whatever they had to do to get rid of him. Out of 168 races, this man won 117. That’s a very high percentage of wins in bike racing, but he had to do that in order to defend himself. He became world champion in 1899. I think that’s an inspiration to anybody who’s in the Black community. When we got together to form the club, I brought up the story, and within two minutes, one of the ladies stopped me and said, that’s going to be the name of the club, period.
Louis Moore was interviewed and photographed for Project Tell Me, which records the wisdom and life experiences of Black Americans ages 75 and older by connecting them with a new generation of Black journalists. The complete interview series will run across Hearst websites around Juneteenth 2021. Go to hearst.com/projecttellme for more information.
Now, what we didn’t know was there was another six to eight Major Taylor clubs in the country already. As the next few years went by, we all began to connect and decided we were going to do some events together. Today, there are probably close to 70 Major Taylor clubs in the country. In the last five years, we’ve had just an explosion of interest in the Black community in cycling and an explosion in the community regarding the history of Major Taylor, so these clubs have just grown immensely. 2 What do you want your legacy to be? / The importance of physical fitness. You know, at 80 years old, I can still ride 21, 22, 23 miles an hour on a bike… To know that I have the physical fitness to be able to do that, it means that I’m taking care of myself the way I should. And that’s what we try to impress upon other people—to take care of yourself. Our community has just been decimated by diabetes, folks overweight, heart disease, sickle cell, all kinds of things, and if you’re willing to take care of yourself physically, you can keep a lot of that at bay. I think I already have kind of a legacy in the community for cycling just because I was probably the first. You know, when I was out riding 20 years ago, 25 years ago in Minneapolis, people were still astonished to see a person of color doing this sport, and I would talk to them often, and I would try to educate them as best I could. I feel good about that. Jada Jackson is a Chicago-based journalist writing about social justice, culture, fashion, and sustainability, and where those topics intersect. She is a 2019 graduate of Columbia College Chicago.
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I RODE 14,000 MILES FROM ALASKA TO WOR D S A N D PHO TO G R A PH Y
B Y N ATA L I E COR B E T T
IT WAS NOWHERE NEAR THE HARDEST THING I’VE EVER DONE
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SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF BOLIVIA’S SECOND LARGEST
salt flat, the Salar de Coipasa, my rear rack finally gave out. After 14,000 miles and 713 days of riding from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the aluminum apparatus that held my pannier to my bike snapped off and was resting uneasily on my cassette. If I couldn’t find a way to secure my rack, it would slowly grind away with every pedal rotation. It didn’t help that I was cycling through roughly eight inches of very salty water. Everything had been fine the evening before, when I sat in my camp chair sipping chamomile tea and gazing out over the vast salt flat I would cross the following day. White salt gleamed in all directions in the waning hours of daylight before the sun dipped below the Andes Mountains, which surround the Salar de Coipasa like a crown. I was lost in thought about my situation and my life. How it had led me here, the choices I’d made that facilitated this moment, the freedom that allowed it. The freedom to just one day leave on a bike and head south for an indeterminate amount of time. I grew up in Minnesota, and since I was a child I’ve found freedom on two wheels: from my first time pedaling my older brother’s two-wheeler unassisted down the sidewalk to my
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teenage years riding in the Saint Paul Classic Bike Tour. But as a transgender woman, I haven’t always felt free to be myself. For years I hid who I was, not only from the world around me but from myself. I feared that even admitting who I was would lead to coming out and being ostracized; that’s what all the articles I had read on the internet in the late ’90s and early aughts had told me. It was like being on probation: According to the outside world, I was free and living my life, but in reality I felt like I was on a short leash. Any slip-up could lead to accidentally outing myself and dealing with the repercussions. I wish I could say that when I got to the point where I was ready to live true to myself, it was because I had reached new levels of self-confidence and self-assuredness. But in reality, by the time I hit my mid-20s, I had reached the end of my rope. I could no longer live the lie I had been selling the world and trying to sell to myself. Early in my transition I was in a weird place. I’d given up on the identity I had created over 25 years and became someone new, someone with the memories of a past life but who didn’t quite understand how to fit into the world. I stopped sleeping and fell into a deep depression for months. At times it felt like
1 OP E NING S P R E A D : N ATA L IE R IDING ON T HE S A L A R DE C OIPA S A . L E F T: A V IE W F R OM T HE S E NDE R O A L F I T Z R O Y T R A IL IN A R G E N T IN A . B E L O W : A S E L F - P O R T R A I T IN B R I T I S H C OL UMB I A .
the only way I would find peace would be to end my life. I was fortunate that I was able to get through this with the empathy of family and friends and a local queer community that took me under its wing and let me explore who I am in a welcoming and safe space. Few things in the world are as freeing as reaching a point of no return and coming out the other side. When you go through something profoundly traumatic and survive, most other troubles and worries seem trivial. So when it came to planning and preparing for my massive cycling adventure that landed me on the Bolivian altiplano—camping on an island in the middle of a giant salt flat—the fears and the worries that might have kept other people from attempting it barely registered in my mind. I had done a big tour before, when I graduated from college in 2012—a couple thousand miles from central Minnesota to the Pacific Coast in Washington. I spent entire days in the saddle breathing the fresh air, and slept in a new place every night. When the ride was over, I stayed in the Twin Cities for a few years, focusing on my job in the climbing industry and leaning on my community of supportive family and friends while I continued to transition from living as male to female. Many of my most supportive friends during that period were from Colombia. And by the time 2017 rolled around and my
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wanderlust returned, I had become obsessed with the idea of visiting the land that was home to so many people I was close with. That became the driving force behind my next big bike adventure: a north-to-south Pan-American Highway trip starting in Deadhorse, Alaska, through the Canadian Rockies, and south along the Pacific Coast. I’d then snake back and forth across Central America twice from the Pacific to the Caribbean before departing Panama on a sailboat bound for Colombia. The ride became a multiyear series of meandering detours, stops, and climbs with nothing more than the vague notion that I was heading eternally south. Sections of my trip took on their own tone. Alaska and Canada were marked by long days and short nights in the northern mountain ranges. By the time I reached the tropics, I began riding earlier in the morning to avoid the dangerous afternoon temperatures. I watched the sun rise and set every day. Reaching South America in October 2018 was a huge milestone. I had completed North America, only one continent to go. Colombia’s natural beauty and welcoming hospitality lived up to my expectations and more. As I climbed higher and higher into the Andes, I felt increasingly at home with the cooler temperatures. Left behind were the mornings when I’d rise in the predawn hours to ride before the tropical heat became too much.
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Now I spent my days pedaling up and down the Sierras and my nights looking up from my campsite at the stars of the southern sky. When I had imagined my trip, it was this that I’d pictured. After Colombia, I continued pedaling south through Ecuador, crossed into Peru along the coast, and then turned inland toward Bolivia. For me, the Bolivian altiplano was a dream come true. This high Andean plateau sits at roughly 12,000 feet and is a relatively flat area surrounded by giant mountains on all sides. Nights were often below freezing and the winds were strong. But I felt happy and free. That night on the Salar de Coipasa I watched the Milky Way climb slowly above the horizon until it seemed to envelop the whole sky. It was like being wrapped in the comfort of a mother’s hug. I fell asleep with a smile on my face, tucked into my sleeping bag counting alpacas as I drifted off. The serenity of my previous night was still with me when I woke. I felt refreshed and confident that I was ready for what the day had in store. Unlike its larger and more famous sibling, the Salar de Uyuni just to the south, the Salar de Coipasa doesn’t get many tourists. I saw only one other vehicle that day. I felt alone and powerful atop my salted throne, with no humanity in sight and only the mountains visible. Another effect of this lack of traffic is the lack of a defined path across the salt. Instead of the smooth and well-worn paths that line the Salar de Uyuni, I faced a very bumpy and jarring ride. And that’s how I found myself sloshing through salty water with my rear rack banging against my cassette. A crisis is only a crisis as long as you let it be one. I let this be a crisis for a minute or so, cursing the gods, the weather, the salt, everything I could think of while standing alone with a broken bike in the middle of a deserted salt flat. I indulged in self-pity for a moment, but then took a few deep breaths and reminded myself that if I had already overcome suicidal depression—the worst crisis of my life—I could absolutely handle this misadventure. I just had to woman up and devise a solution, since no one else could do it for me. Unable to reattach the snapped rack to one of the bolt holes on my bike, I dug through my pack until I found some spare cord that I’d brought for emergencies. I strapped the rack to where the seat stay and chainstays meet. It ended up being so stable that I considered not replacing the broken rack. With that problem solved, I resumed my slow trek across the flat. At the end of the day we are our own biggest jailers, imprisoned in self-doubt, insecurities, and fear. Fear is one of our strongest motivators as animals; it keeps us alive and relatively safe from harm. But with that safety can come a paralyzing aversion to risk. I don’t have all the answers for overcoming this stuff. I do know that there is a freedom that comes with letting go of your fear of the unknowns and the what-ifs and just being present in the here and now, focusing on what’s right in front of you. When you do that, you might look up and see a way forward that you could have missed if you were only looking at the end goal. The first step is realizing that there is a way, even if you might not know what it is at the moment. And that is where the journey begins.
1 L E F T: A MONUME N T IN T HE S A L A R DE U Y UNI T H AT C OMME MOR AT E S T HE 2 0 14 D A K A R R A L LY. B E L O W ( C L O C K W I S E F R OM T OP L E F T ) : P R IDE F L A G S ON N ATA L IE ’ S B IK E . T HE G AT E S OF T HE A R C T IC F R OM A L A S K A . L U S H MOUN TA IN S OF C A L D A S , C OL OMB I A .
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress. Call 800-273-8255.
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If There’s No Justice When
DRIVERS KILL KIDS ON BIKES, BY
PETER FLAX
What Hope Do Any of Us Have?
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T HE FA MILY OF M A R IO VA L E N Z UE L A V I S I T S HI S ME MOR I A L IN QUE E N S , NE W Y OR K . T HE T E E N A G E R WA S K IL L E D W HE N A T R UC K DR I V E R T UR NE D IN F R ON T OF HIM .
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This is a story without a happy ending, really without any ending—a story that hangs in the balance. Because the questions it raises about whether everyone can ride in their communities without facing the terrors wrought by institutional apathy are the subject of endless, incomprehensible debate that devalues the lives of riders like Mario, and politicizes the anguish of their families. Mario loved bikes. That is beyond debate. He spent his afternoons riding with his friends near his home in Astoria, a New York City neighborhood on the western edge of Queens.
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Cour tesy Mar tha Valenzuela (Mario); Cour tesy Vaccaro & White (crash)
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT LIFE AND DEATH. IT’S A STORY ABOUT THE BEAUTY OF BIKES AND FAMILIAL LOVE. IT’S ABOUT A 14-YEAR-OLD NAMED MARIO VALENZUELA WHO WAS CRUSHED BY A MACK TRUCK.
Mario went on lots of rides, but this story pivots around the one on September 21, 2019. The streets of New York bathed in the last vestiges of summer weather. Mario and a friend hooked up with two buddies over by the landmark Pepsi Cola sign in Gantry Plaza State Park, a waterfront promenade along the East River in the neighboring community of Long Island City. As they started riding east, one of them got a flat, so they detoured south to a local shop to get it patched. That’s why the four boys wound up on Borden Avenue. E ven by Ne w York sta nda rds, the fabric of Long Island City has been transformed over the past 20 years. Though the neighborhood was a sprawling industrial district for decades, today Long Island City is dotted with gleaming residential high-rises, craft breweries, and ramen joints. But Borden Avenue—wide, straight, and the only east-west road out of that part of the neighborhood— travels the southernmost margin of Queens, which remains the province of tow yards, building-supply wholesalers, distribution centers, and a massive Long Island Rail Road train yard they sought to skirt around. When Mario and his friends turned left at the light from Vernon Boulevard onto Borden, they were right beside and then behind the Mack truck. The 52,000-pound vehicle had a light gray cab with blue accent stripes and a large gray dumpster on the back. Some of the facts about what happened next are known because two video cameras located on the exterior of a warehouse recorded Mario’s trip down Borden Avenue. The one pointed west captures the truck turning onto Borden, and moments later Mario enters the frame, wearing track pants and a pink T-shirt, and riding a black single-speed with drop bars, pink lettering, and deep white rims. He’s riding faster than his friends, maybe a car length behind the truck. There are no vehicles parked on Borden Avenue, and Mario rides to the right of the traffic lane. Before they both pass out of the frame, the truck has shifted left to sit halfway into the oncoming traffic lane. The second video, looking east, is shorter and considerably more terrifying. The truck enters the frame at about the same speed but now the right front tire is touching the road’s double-yellow midline. Up ahead, Borden Avenue continues and there’s an on-ramp to the Long Island Expressway to the left. In the matter of a second or so, the truck
decelerates and turns right from Borden onto 11th Street. I have watched that video more than 100 times and I cannot discern whether a turn signal or brake lights are visible. In any case, the truck decelerates far faster than Mario does. And despite an effort to slow down and turn right, Mario and the truck collide near its right front wheel and he falls to the pavement. Then both the rider and the truck exit the frame, leaving the final second or two of Mario’s life off camera.
Peter Gerber
LI K E S O M A N Y N A R R ATI V E S A B O U T B I K E R I D E R S W H O A R E K I LLE D
in a crash with a motor vehicle, the deeper you investigate Mario’s story, the more heartbreaking it becomes. But the extra layers of pain and injustice in Mario’s case are especially tragic—because he was a child, the son of Hispanic immigrants, pedaling in a city where bike riders are completely marginalized. Martha Valenzuela, more than a year later, carries her son’s death like an open wound. “It is still very painful,” she says on a phone call this past December. “It’s a type of pain that you cannot describe.” Martha came to New York City from Mexico City about 25 years ago. For many years, she has worked in a laundromat in Astoria. Her husband, Mario Sr., works in construction. Both have labored hard for decades in their adopted hometown, concentrating their energy into building a better
life for their three children born in the U.S., Mario A B O V E : M A R IO ’ S and two older sisters, Rocio and Sara. B IK E AT T HE C R A S H As an immigrant on the margins, it takes courSITE. OPPOSITE: age for Martha to speak out publicly about her A 2 0 1 8 P HO T O OF M A R IO; A S T IL L son’s death. But, she says, “At this point, I’m not F R OM T HE V IDE O OF afraid. I’m not scared. Whatever I have to do—I T HE C R A S H . will do for my son.” The laundromat where Martha works is five or six blocks from IS 126, where Mario was a student. “He wasn’t that good at school, but he liked it,” laughs Martha. Every morning, she and Mario would go to the laundromat around 7 a.m. Some days, like on September 21, she’d feed him breakfast there. “He liked French toast and egg sandwiches and pancakes. And then after school he would come to the laundromat for a couple hours, tell me what he did that day, and then we’d go home together.” “He was a good kid,” Martha says. “Not just because he was my son. He was kind.” Martha works on Saturdays, and she recalls saying goodbye to her son at the laundromat on the day that he was hit. Mario and his sister Sara came over to wash their own clothes, and left before lunchtime. “I told him to be good and I touched his face,” Martha says, taking a deep breath. “That was the last time I saw him.” A few hours later, a friend came by and told her Mario had been hit.
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She eventually wound up at the New York Police Department’s 108th Precinct in Long Island City. M A R T H A , M A R IO S R . , A ND T HE IR OL DE S T There, she was told that Mario was gone. D A UG H T E R , R O C IO , Martha and Mario Sr. identified their son’s body P HO T O G R A P HE D ON the next day at the medical examiner’s office, but A P R IL 1 1 , 2 0 2 1 . getting answers took longer. Martha says that eventually a detective with the NYPD called her and told her the crash was Mario’s fault. “The detective said he was hanging from the truck and that’s why the crash happened,” she says. “I didn’t want to believe that, but we didn’t have proof on anything else.” Weeks and then months dragged on as the family waited for more information about the crash. “That whole time, we were waiting for proof,” Martha says. “So I started thinking it was his fault.” A year would pass before the family would finally see the NYPD’s file on Mario’s death.
T H R E E C A L L S T O 9 1 1 C A M E A L M O S T I M M E D I AT E LY A F T E R T H E
1:54 p.m. crash. Within minutes, two officers with the 108th Precinct had answered the “10-53 pedestrian struck” call from dispatch and were on the scene. An ambulance arrived quickly, and an EMS technician pronounced Mario’s death at 2:02 p.m. These and many other details are documented in a report produced by a division of the NYPD known as the Collision Investigation Squad. Bicycling has obtained a copy of the 50-page CIS file, which summarizes the investigation into Valenzuela’s death. It is an enlightening and discouraging document that raises questions about the proficiency of this agency to seek justice for anyone who rides a bike in New York City. CIS involvement was requested a minute before Mario died and an investigator, Detective James Conlon, was on the scene within 90 minutes. Before he arrived on Borden Avenue, Conlon had already conducted phone interviews with two drivers who had witnessed the incident and had called 911. Once there, Conlon interviewed the first NYPD officers on the scene, took photos and collected other evidence, canvased for additional witnesses (he found none) and video cameras, and obtained a written statement from the truck driver. In the CIS report’s statements, both eyewitnesses, as paraphrased by detectives, indicated that they’d seen Mario holding onto the truck and let go as both turned onto Borden. They did not report seeing Mario holding onto the truck at any point along Borden. And neither could recall if the truck made a turn signal before the crash. The truck driver told Conlon that he was not using his phone during the incident (the report does not mention whether Conlon made an effort to substantiate this). The NYPD officers examining the truck noted that the front turn signal on the passenger side was inoperable. The CIS detective observed one building near the crash site with exterior cameras and noted he’d return during normal business hours. Around 4 p.m., Conlon met
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with an assistant district attorney at the scene, and together they agreed that no criminal charges would be brought against the driver at that time. Three days later, when Conlon obtained video footage from the cameras he saw at the scene, the case had already been preliminarily closed. But the CIS report does confirm that the lead investigator watched the same two video perspectives described earlier, and he offers an 81-word summary of the footage. There’s no mention of the driver’s speed or how the truck traveled across the roadway’s centerline or how Mario should have been visible in the truck’s side-view mirror for the entire stretch of Borden Avenue or how state law gives Mario the right of way to travel straight through an intersection. The brief summary does, however, state that the truck’s right-turn signal—presumably the rear—is visible. On the day of New Year’s Eve in 2019, the CIS investigation into Mario Valenzuela’s death was formally closed with only one major contributing factor noted: “BICYCLIST ERROR.” The CIS document concludes that Mario had been improperly passing the truck and then was unable to stop in time. Detective Conlon also opined that the criminal citations against the owner of the truck, including the inoperable turn signal on the side of the truck that hit Mario, were not relevant to his investigation. After noting that he had conferred with his CIS supervisor and the Queens District Attorney office, Conlon ended his report with the following four words: “Case closed/ Investigation concluded.” After more than three months and despite video showing him riding safely and legally, the NYPD blamed Mario for his own death.
O N E D E TA I L TH AT S TA N D S O UT F RO M WATC H I N G TH E V I D EO S I N
the CIS report is the presence of three bike riders behind Mario. In a search for witnesses, Detective Conlon interviewed two of three drivers who called 911 (he could not reach the third), took a statement from the truck driver, and canvased Borden Avenue hours after the crash. But there is no mention of an effort to contact the three bike riders (who were Mario’s friends) for statements. I tracked one of them down in a few days. The boy’s mother let me speak with him if I did not share his name. “It really wasn’t Mario’s fault,” the boy says. “I mean we were next to the truck for a few blocks.” After the crash, he and the other two riders retreated up the block a bit and sat on a stairway to absorb what had happened, watch the activity, and make some phone calls. “The police never came to talk to us so we left,” he says. This young man, who is 15 now, says that he met Mario in sixth grade. They had another friend in common and the three were tight. One of them had a backyard where they would shoot hoops or play soccer. “We rode all summer,” says the boy. “Mario was really good at riding bicycles. We would go to Flushing Meadows Park for the whole day. He was the fastest of all of us. He would ride fearlessly.” When asked to describe Mario, the boy says he was fun to be around and good at soccer. “He would always pay for people who didn’t have money when we went to eat,” he adds. “Mario cared about other people.”
WITH CRASHES LIKE THE ONE THAT KILLED MARIO
Valenzuela, police investigations and media reports typically focus on the individuals involved, in a logical quest to determine fault. But in the bigger picture, fault often lies in road design and the voices and interests that are valued by people with power. This is certainly true on Borden Avenue. Just six months before Mario’s death, another cyclist named Richard Spencer had been
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struck and killed less than a half mile west of where Mario was hit. And two months before that deadly crash, the board of a nearby residential condo, the Murano, had written a letter to city officials asking for a protected bike lane on Borden Avenue. “The natural makeup of the long straight sections of road encourages reckless driving,” wrote the shareholders. Bike advocates in New York say that this corridor has been a focus of their efforts for years, with little progress. “We see that all the time, that there are streets and intersections where the city has essentially been on notice for a long time about the conditions,” says Marco Connor, Deputy Director of Transportation Alternatives, a New York nonprofit that has advocated for safer streets since 1973. These issues are hardly unique to New York City, and often they play out in hyperlocal fashion, as projects get killed in community meetings rather than at city hall or the Department of Transportation. New York City’s five boroughs have 59 community boards that manage issues like
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zoning and event permitting, and under Mayor Bill de Blasio have been empowered to make decisions about local road projects. “Very often community boards water down projects to appease local opposition,” says Connor. “And these boards are often not representative of their communities. They trend older, have a higher rate of car ownership than the community, and are whiter.” In the case of Long Island City and neighboring communities, the local board members have consistently voted or advocated against proposals to build protected bike lanes. No doubt, the local politics and community sentiments around bike lanes are complicated. In some cases, community support for protected infrastructure in working-class neighborhoods is limited because residents see them as tools of gentrification or because they don’t solve larger issues related to policing and safety. But an oversized reason that neighborhoods like Long Island City lack safe places to ride is because the people in those communities who ride—often young, less affluent people of color—lack
a voice and power. “If you look at a map of New York City and look where bike lanes are, an overwhelming majority are in white and wealthy neighborhoods,” says Connor. “The way the city has decided to invest in infrastructure shows great disparity. There’s historical inequity along the lines of race and wealth.” The chasm between the needs of the community and the position of local political leaders was exposed at a community meeting in Queens less than three weeks after the fatal crash. The meeting was intended to discuss a proposed protected bike lane on another street in Astoria, but things got sidetracked as Mario’s death became a political football. “We had a young man on Borden Avenue who was killed,” Cathy Nolan, a Queens Assembly member, said at the community meeting. “Borden Avenue is a street that bikes should be prohibited from… It’s a nightmare tragedy this child was killed, but honestly, it’s a very difficult place to envision someone riding a bike.” Juan Restrepo, a community organizer in Queens for Transportation Alternatives, was at that meeting and says Nolan’s statement, which she later walked back, reflects a “bigger issue” that keeps streets like Borden Avenue unsafe. “It’s about how elected officials perceive the users of bike lanes,” he says. “And if they don’t seem like an important enough constituent, they don’t take it seriously.” It is worth noting that the same week that Mario was killed, a $40 million public library with a spectacular teen center opened eight blocks away. And that residential developments continue to bring more families into the neighborhood. As communities change, attitudes and policies and street configurations need to change, too. Borden Avenue is more than the province of trash trucks and harried commuters; it is part of a community where people live and work and even play. Still, a year and a half after Mario’s death, there is neither a bike lane, nor a plan to build one, on Borden Avenue.
crying saying that Mario got into a car accident T HE C OR NE R OF and she told me to go to the police department,” B OR DE N A ND 1 1T H she says. Hours of confusion followed—the station S T R E E T, L O OK ING N O R T HE A S T T O WA R D nearest their home wasn’t the right precinct. As T HE L ONG I S L A ND they were trying to find the correct station, Sara E X P R E S S WAY R A MP. and others were frantically making phone calls. “We called a lot of different hospitals asking if my brother was admitted and they all said he wasn’t there.” Finally, when they got to the 108th Precinct, the unthinkable happened. “One of them took us outside and told us that he didn’t make it and died on the scene,” she says. Sara soon found herself more explicitly connected to the search for justice. The findings of the CIS report meant that the truck driver would not face criminal charges. As with many cases when a cyclist is killed, the family of the victim can only seek some kind of justice in civil court. Sara, who was born in this country, ultimately had to be made the legal administrator of Mario’s estate. His own parents, who have lived and worked in New York for 25 years, lacked the legal standing to do so. When asked how she wanted people to remember her little brother, Sara echoes comments from Mario’s friend and his mother. “I want people to remember that Mario was a good person,” says Sara. “He always helped his friends and the people he cared about.” Sara also mentions that Mario was hoping to leverage his riding for his first real job. “He wanted to join Uber Eats or a food-delivery service when he turned 15 and use his bike to deliver,” she says, noting that he would articulate the nuances of his love of riding. “He said he liked the way the wind felt when he rode his bike. I think it made him feel free.”
TH I S PA ST N OV E M B E R , TH E N E W YO R K STATE D E PA RTM E NT O F
M ARIO ’ S S I STE R SAR A DI DN ’ T WANT TO TALK TO M E ON TH E
phone. “I don’t think my daughter can handle Mario’s death—she was the keeper of him,” says Martha. “She used to take him to school and the park. It’s too hard for her.” But Sara, now 22, was willing to answer my questions via email. She describes her younger brother as a “silly, funny boy who liked to play pranks,” who liked to playfully jump-scare her when she was leaving a room. She says he liked to play Fortnite and Call of Duty and listen to Lil Peep and XXXTentation and a bunch of indie hip-hop artists on SoundCloud. On the day of Mario’s last ride, Sara walked home with him from the laundromat. “We were home and I was cleaning the kitchen and he asked for permission to go hang out with his friends,” she recalls. “When he left, I told him to be careful.” A couple hours later her phone rang. “Around 2 p.m. my mom called me
SIDE GUARDS SAVE LIVES
The 52,000-pound truck that hit and killed Mario did not have side guards. Now mandated in at least 47 countries—Japan was the first, in 1979— these panels cover the space between a truck’s front and rear wheels and have been documented to be a cost-effective way to save the lives of pedestrians and bike riders. The presence of side guards could have changed the arc of Mario’s life.
Motor Vehicles conducted a hearing to determine if Tyron Leon, the truck driver who hit Mario, should have his driver’s license revoked or suspended. The administrative law judge who heard the case ruled in Leon’s favor and wrote a decision that essentially echoes the findings in the CIS report. Steve Vaccaro, an attorney with the New York firm Vaccaro & White, who is representing Mario’s estate, says the judge accepted Detective Conlon’s interpretation of the video evidence without watching it himself. In the end, the DMV judge ruled that the driver was exercising due care and Mario was attempting to illegally pass the truck. The repercussions of the CIS report—concluding that Mario died due to “Bicyclist error”—continue to distress his family, bike riders, and anyone else who has seen the video evidence. What does it matter if he held onto, and let go of, the truck well before the crash, as the detectives noted? “Perhaps police wrongly blamed Mario for this fatal crash because some witnesses thought they saw him skitching on the truck,” says Vaccaro.
The City of New York has long been aware of the safety issue. In 2015, after a cyclist named Hoyt Jacobs was killed by the driver of a sanitation truck in Long Island City, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed a bill that mandated side guards on 10,000 private and public trash trucks by 2024. As of last summer, roughly 3,170 (about 70 percent) of New York City’s fleet of sanitation and DOT trucks were compliant, but a far smaller percentage of the
6,000 or so private sanitation trucks that ply New York streets are equipped with side guards. “On one hand, the city has made progress with this, with its own fleet,” says Marco Connor, Deputy Director of Transportation Alternatives. “But the city could do more to address private trucks. There’s no doubt that the city should use every power to make sure every truck operating in the city has lifesaving guards.”
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“THE DRIVER SHOULD GO TO JAIL. HE KILLED MY SON— HOW COME HE’S NOT GOING TO JAIL?” 64
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“But as a legal matter, if that occurred, it was so long before the actual collision as to be completely inadmissible in court and irrelevant to what caused the crash.” More broadly, what might an alternative explanation for the crash be? Some possible answers are alleged in the civil lawsuit filed by Vaccaro last November, roughly 14 months after the teenager’s death. In a complaint filed with the Supreme Court of the State of New York in Kings County, Tyron Leon as well as Limited Interior Group, the company that employed him and owned the truck, are named as defendants. Throughout the document, Valenzuela is referred to as the Decedent. The complaint alleges that the driver and the truck owner should be liable for negligence and the wrongful death of Mario Valenzuela. With regards to Leon, the complaint itemizes 28 alleged “acts and omissions” that comprise the negligence that caused Mario’s death. Among that list of assertions, the complaint alleges that Leon overtook Mario “in an unreasonably unsafe manner
ON FEBRUARY 24 , MARTHA VALENZUELA AND
by failing to remain at a safe distance from the Decedent before moving right.” It also alleges that Leon was operating the truck without a right turn signal, that he failed to signal his turn, failed to properly use his truck’s mirrors, failed “to keep a lookout for Decedent, a cyclist who was proceeding in the roadway in all respects lawfully,” and was operating a “mobile phone or other portable electronic device” while operating the truck. (Although Detective Conlon did not include any mention of that final point in the CIS report, Vaccaro says the CIS detective did acknowledge the possibility of device usage during the DMV hearing in December.) Meanwhile, the complaint alleges that Limited Interior Group is negligent because it failed to conduct a daily inspection on the truck and allowed a 26-ton truck without a properly functioning turn signal to be operated on public roadways. Among the more chilling passages in the complaint is one that notes that Valenzuela “was grievously injured in the crash, and following a period of pre-impact terror, and a further period of conscious pain and suffering, the Decedent died of injuries suffered in the crash.” (When reached to discuss the case, legal counsel for Leon and Limited Interior declined to comment.) More than five months after that complaint was filed, hearings on the matter have not even begun, due to legal wrangling over whether the case should be heard in Brooklyn (where Leon resided when the crash occurred) or Queens (where he since moved, and where juries tend to be less sympathetic to cyclists, Vaccaro says). The procedural delays are agonizing for Mario’s family. “It is impossible for me to have peace when the official government account of what happened is a lie,” says Martha. “We look to our government to provide justice for the people at a moment like this.”
L E F T: M A R IO ’ S G H O S T B IK E ME MOR I A L S I T S ON T HE S OU T HE A S T C OR NE R OF B OR DE N A ND 1 1T H S T R E E T.
her attorney participated in a hearing conducted by the New York City Council to debate a new bill that proposed to shift crash investigation from the NYPD to the Department of Transportation. It’s easy to get sidetracked by rhetorical interpretations of defunding police, but in this case the proposal was simply exploring whether the entity charged with making safer roads in New York, with arguably more expertise on the matter, should lead investigations for crashes that cause death and serious injury. A Transportation Alternatives report issued last year reveals a troubling history of racial bias in the city’s traffic policing and notes that NYPD officers arrested only 1 percent of hit-and-run drivers in 2017. In an emotional live video statement made to the city council, Martha testified to her pain—over both her loss and the investigatory flaws that blame her son for his own death. Wearing a white sweatshirt decorated with Mario’s photo and the words “Fly High Bro,” Martha sits in Mario’s bedroom—behind her on the wall is a crucifix, a framed photo from a soccer game, and a Union Jack flag emblazoned with the phrase “Punk’s Not Dead.” “He was out with his friends on that Saturday and he never came home,” she says, choking back tears. “I never had the chance to protect Mario from that truck driver. I never had the chance to say goodbye to Mario. For a mother, these are terrible things that make my heart ache.” Her final thoughts in that brief testimony transcend her personal grief. “Nothing can be done to bring Mario back,” she says. “We can only continue our fight to win justice for Mario by bringing to light the truth of what happened. I cannot say why police chose to blame Mario when the video shows that it is not his fault. Part of it is that people, including the police, do not understand and respect the right of people, including children, to bicycle in the road. But regardless of the motivation of the police, it is clear that the trained police do not understand basic matters of the traffic and the right of people to bicycle in the street.” Initially, it seemed, the proposal to shift investigatory responsibility from the NYPD to the DOT had been squashed. And in early March, Mayor de Blasio expressed support to expand—rather than replace—the CIS. “We need to do more to investigate crashes because we need more consequence for crashes,” the mayor said publicly. Critics argued that vulnerable road users need better investigations rather than more investigations. But then the unexpected happened. Exactly a month after Martha testified, the New York City Council passed a groundbreaking bill that makes the DOT, and not the NYPD, the lead agency in investigating crashes. De Blasio said he would sign the bill. Through all the legislative twists and turns, the Valenzuela family can only wait. Their son is gone and their only hopes now are for justice and peace and some kind of official recognition that Mario was not to blame for his own death. “This is unbelievable,” Martha says. “The driver should go to jail. He killed my son—how come he’s not going to jail?” Every Sunday, Martha and Mario Sr. go on a pilgrimage to honor their beloved son. First, they go to the corner of Borden Avenue and 11th Street. They set out fresh flowers if the weather cooperates, and Mario Sr. plays the hip-hop his son loved on a portable speaker. Then they go home and eat lunch and head to the cemetery. There, at St. Michael’s, one of the oldest cemeteries in New York City, Martha finds something resembling peace in the niche where the remains of her son, forever 14, lie. “In the niche, there’s a beautiful picture of Mario,” she says. “It’s the last picture of him—my daughter took it. It looks so real.” Martha continues, very quietly now. “Mario looks at me—I see a person there.”
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PRESENTED
BY
SR A M
I ALMOST RAN INTO A POLE ONCE WHILE STARING AT
HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE MY POWER METER BY JEN KYLE WHALEN
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my stem. This was 2016, and I was in the midst of pursuing my professional racing dreams. My eyes crossed from the effort as I tried to make out that tiny number on the computer that would validate how hard I felt I was pushing and prove that I was good enough. After spending a few years on domestic teams as a Cat 1 racer, I really wanted to make the jump to a big, official UCI pro team, one with an actual team bus, a soigneur to attend to my legs, and a chef to attend to my bottomless pit of a stomach. I sent out dozens of race résumés and threw myself desperately at team directors like a rabid contestant on The Bachelor. When I didn’t get a rose, I suffered from a bout of midseason blues. I needed to clear my head, so I decided to use my bike for something new: adventure. I loaded up for my first bike-packing trip, one that would take me across the United States, from New York City to Los Angeles, and it completely changed my relationship with my bike. Somewhere in the middle of rural Ohio, I found myself in a place where I was unable to charge my computer. Without that device, I didn’t have the data to hypnotize me. The only place to look was around. It forced me to grow out of my bad stemstaring habit, and after the computer spent months dead in my frame bag, I finally shelved it. I also hit the pause button on road racing. Taking that mental break from the same demanding routine made me crave different things from the bike and from life. I spent the next five years happily looking up, taking in the views, and enjoying a healthy recovery from my addiction to power. But this year, I started planning for some really big, multiday rides. I’m talking over-a-century-aday-for-three-weeks-type rides, and I knew I would need to use power to properly prepare my body for that level of effort and train the right way. I (reluctantly) admit that after trash-talking power meters for years, the distance from one did make my heart grow fonder. So that’s when I decided to make the switch to the new SRAM Rival eTap AXS. I took my Specialized Tarmac over to Let’s Ride Cyclery in Burbank, California, and when I picked her up, she looked different. The new components were so blindingly shiny, I had to lower my shades. She had makeover-level confidence. I was like, “Who are you, miss?! Oh, pardon me, with your Flattop chain and your 36-tooth cassette. Your 36-tooth cassette!” I felt like a grandma thinking, “Back in my day, we only had 28-tooth cassettes, and we had to push the paddle over to shift!” The upgrades got me stoked. Dancing on the pedals up mountains is one of my favorite pastimes, so when considering the two options for the 2x cassette, 10-30 or 10-36, I went with the latter. My whiny, fixie knees were very excited to have the extra gears. Mount Baldy called
Photography by S I N U H E X AV I E R
“My careful return to measuring watts felt much like going out to dinner with an ex: apprehensive, adventurous, exciting, and kind of devious.” my name louder than ever before; the Alps sang like sirens; the Pyrenees summoned. Alas, since COVID-19 travel restrictions are still in place, I couldn’t test my new gear in the Dolomites, so my local favorites had to do. The steep canyon climbs of the Santa Monica Mountains stood no chance; I felt like I was on a rocket ship. Halfway up a 10 percent grade, I realized I hadn’t even shifted into the small chainring! I squealed with disbelief and apologized to the rear derailleur for the cross-chaining. The largest cassette I’ve ever had only went up to 30, so this was a brand-new feeling. It reminded me of pressing the shifter button on an electronic shifting system for the first time. This was back around 2012, and e-shifting was all the rage. With it, sprinters got trigger happy at the
end of a pack finish; climbers could jump up multiple gears when the road got steep. I envied it, knowing it was way out of my price range back then. But now, at a fraction of the price of a top-end electronic groupset, Rival eTap AXS finally gives more riders access to the world of buttery-smooth shifting at a lower price point. The slashed cost comes from slightly heavier materials—no carbon here—but for a retired road racer like me, I don’t mind a few extra grams of weight. I’m thrilled that more data geeks can ride around staring at their stem without breaking the bank—and hopefully without breaking any poles, either. Which brings me back to my long-lost love, the power meter. Instead of being integrated into the crank or the pedals, the Rival power meter snuggles the iconic Quarq technology into the crank spindle, reads the watts, then doubles it for an estimation of total rider power. My careful return to measuring watts felt much like going out to dinner with an ex: apprehensive, adventurous, exciting, and kind of devious. My thoughts went back and forth between romanticizing the good times and questioning the bad. But then I felt what it was like to officially hold 250 watts again (and before you start trolling, that is significant for my 125-pound body.) Seeing that number this time around felt different—it felt empowering. It validated how strong I know I am. Now, I’m happy with how my relationship with my bike has evolved. We have fun together. Our watts are measured in happiness, sweat, and good times. And although I have slipped back into my old ways and am already fantasizing about hitting that restart button on racing, I’m not going to let the power meter completely rule me again. There’s a better balance now. So if you see me out on the roads and catch me staring down at my stem too much, I welcome you to hit me over the head with a Clif Bar (as long as I’m wearing my helmet).
SYSTEM UPGRADE
HOW MY BIKE HAS CHANGED WITH THE RIVAL ETAP AXS A larger cassette range gives me the gears I need to enjoy spinning effortlessly up mountains. My 10-36 option makes it easy to find the right one, no matter how steep the grade.
The built-in power meter tells me how many watts I’m pushing (but I try not to be distracted).
The hoods fit snugly in my small hands; the shifters are adjustable, so I don’t need to stretch to grip the brake levers.
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NOTES, OPINIONS, USEFUL TIPS, AND THE COOLEST GEAR FROM INSIDE THE WORLD’S MOST RIGOROUS BIKE AND GEAR TEST CENTER
SUMMER JERSEYS: TESTING THE PHYSICS AND FIT
ALIYA BARNWELL W RI T ER A ND PRODUC T T E S T ER
Cour tesy Sebastian Wallach (headshot)
BR AD FORD T E S T ING PROCE S S DE V EL OPER
SEBAS TIAN WALL ACH BIC YCL ING L A B A SSIS TA N T
Photography by T R E V O R R A A B
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THE TEST ZONE
HOW WE TESTED
We selected five top options based on their design, features, price, and availability—so far, all have escaped the widespread pandemicrelated shortages that are affecting many other products—then sent one set of samples to our tester in Brooklyn, New York, and kept an identical set to test in our lab in Easton, Pennsylvania. We used our wear-tester to evaluate each jersey’s comfort, features, and on-bike performance. For the lab’s sweat test, we recorded how much water vapor passed through each jersey’s fabric. To do this, we cut squares of fabric from the front and back of each jersey and secured them over Styrofoam cups, each filled with 50 grams of desiccant beads—basically, a substance that absorbs water. We weighed the setup and placed each in a tightly confined, highly humid, swampy environment for 120 minutes. Then we pulled the cups out and returned them to the scale, where we recorded how much water weight each gained. This permeability test, based on ANSI standards, demonstrates how well moisture is able to transfer through the fabric without variables like wind or rain. The most permeable jerseys had the highest differences in weight (see chart). Higher permeability rates create greater potential to draw moisture through the material so it can evaporate on the outside of the jersey, providing a cooling effect (or what most brands refer to as “wicking”). The test shows the capability of the fabrics used, not the exact performance you’d experience in the real world. That’s why we had our tester wear them on hard outdoor rides, too.
SWEAT TEST LAB RESULTS Jersey Model
Total Weight Front Absorbed
Back
Eliel Classic Diablo
2.1g
1.2g
0.9g
Pactimo Summit Aero Mesh
1.9g
1.0g
0.9g
Rapha Pro Team Flyweight
1.8g
0.9g
0.9g
Specialized SL Air Fade*
1.6g
0.8g
0.8g
The Black Bibs Pro Summer *
1.2g
0.6g
0.6g
*Same material front and back
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S P E C I A L I Z E D S L A I R FA D E $ 1 2 0
The bright, sunset colors on this jersey make it look like an ideal piece for hot summer rides. The longer sleeves and low collar add even more style. Specialized uses one material throughout, which is made from 85 percent recycled polyester, but without any mesh panels, the SL Air Fade weighs a bit more than the others we tested and transferred less water than all but The Black Bibs. Its performance isn’t far off, though, and its price is lower than the top models’. That may make it more attractive to riders who want a light everyday summer jersey.
RAPHA PRO T E A M F LY W E IGH T $180
Cour tesy Eliel; Cour tesy Rapha; Cour tesy The Black Bibs; Cour tesy Pactimo
ELIEL CLASSIC DIABLO $150
The Classic Diablo has mesh fabric on the sides and front, and something more like a solid material on the back and sleeves with UPF 50 sun protection—the result is a supremely light and flashy jersey that allowed the most water vapor to move across it. It is the “raciest” cut of the bunch—the torso is short and fits tightly. It lacks a zipper pocket, which cuts weight but means you’ll probably want a ride wallet for keys and cash or a credit card. This made-in-California jersey isn’t cheap, but it was the lightestfeeling on the bike, and the top performer in the lab.
Rapha uses suitably lightweight materials in the Pro Team: A tight-knit back panel offers UPF 40 protection from the sun, a mesh front allows cooling ventilation, and similar mesh on the elbow-length sleeves keeps weight low. Both the front and rear panels we tested in the lab transferred a good amount of water vapor, though the mesh front should feel cooler on hot days. All the jerseys we tested had full-length zippers for extra ventilation, but this was the only one with a zipper that matched the fabric color.
THE BLACK BIBS PRO SUMMER $65
The Pro Summer jersey costs less than half of what the others cost, and the fabric performed about half as well in our test. But this jersey still impresses and felt comfortable on the road. The front and back are made with SPF 30 fabric, and the material used in the mesh sleeves and side panels is made by Italian brand Miti, which provides fabrics to Rapha and other brands. The sleeves are short—a plus on warm days—but the cut looks dated compared with some of the more modern silhouettes here.
PAC T I MO SU M M I T A E RO M E SH $1 5 2
Like the Eliel Classic Diablo, this jersey has a spicy, see-through mesh front panel. But it has a longer torso and a rear zipper pocket for stashing valuables. The back panel has a more solid pinhole mesh that moves a lot of moisture—among the most in the test. Pactimo delivers some nice details, too, including a comfortable low-pro collar, expanding rear pockets, and reflective accents for better nighttime visibility.
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PUT IN THE TIME.
CRUSH THE CLIMB! Yep, you’re definitely riding up that monster.
Raise your threshold to ride stronger and faster! Build killer glutes, core, quads, and calves! Torch fat!
Bicycling.com/Climb
15143
THE TEST ZONE NOURISHING YOUR BASIC NEEDS AND IRR ATIONAL FIX ATIONS
PRIORITY ACE OF SPA DE S PRICE: $799 / W EIGHT: 22 LB (M)
THE ACE IS Priority’s
fixie with a touch of class. It’s designed for commuters who like a little pep in their daily ride but aren’t fans of bike maintenance. I am just that type of commuter. My bikes are my primary form of transportation, but I abuse any bike I use as a daily rig. When I’m just home from work—or after I’ve ridden through rain or snow—I want a warm shower for myself, not for my bike. And that’s exactly how I tested the Ace of Spades, the performance model of the brand’s Ace line, which also includes the $499, more recreational-focused Ace of Clubs (it has Photography by T R E V O R R A A B
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THE TEST ZONE
A flip-flop hub lets you easily switch between a fixed and singlespeed setup, and a belt drive means cleaner, quieter rides and less maintenance.
an easier gear ratio, and no carbon fork). I used it to commute through the streets of New York City during this year’s crappy winter months—and I never gave it a bath. Thankfully Priority’s ethos, which is to make bikes that are “easy to buy, assemble, ride, and maintain,” shines through in wet weather. All adult models are equipped with a Gates Carbon Drive belt instead of a traditional chain and cassette. The belt is quieter and cleaner than a chain, and demands less maintenance from the bike’s owner. Another welcome feature on the Ace is the flipflop hub with a cassette body and fixed thread, developed by and unique to Priority, that lets you easily swap between fixed and freewheel cogs—a first for belt-driven bikes—with a standard bottom bracket socket tool. No more visits to the shop or the need for expensive tools. Switching from fixed to singlespeed and back is as easy as flipping the wheel and tightening it evenly in the dropouts. By making it easy to change the setup (and gearing),
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Priority has created what may be the best-value singlespeed on the market right now, one that can take a lot of drivetrain abuse while making it easy to tweak the gear ratio. The Ace of Spades also offers a higher-level build than what many fixies in this price range offer. You get a 6061 aluminum frame, a carbon fork and seatpost, a 680mm-wide handlebar, 28mm WTB ThickSlick tires, and geometry made for fast everyday riding, not racing. All of this made for forgiving rides on NYC’s winter-ravaged, potholerich streets. And the stiff rear triangle—required of any belt-driven bike to avoid belt slip—offered a snappy response from the 55/20 gear ratio. That said, some of the same things that make the Ace of Spades comfy were also a bit of a challenge in the city. The gear ratio kept me out of the Bronx entirely—it’s the hilliest of the five boroughs. If I absolutely had to ride the Ace through the hillier areas, I could, but I doubt it’d be easy. I recommend looking at bigger cogs if you want an Ace but live
in an area with inclines over 8 percent. Also, as comfortable and stable as a wide, flat bar is in certain situations, it took some getting used to on busy city streets. No more squeezing through narrow spaces or filtering to the front of a line—my nerves were tight when riding over busy, crowded bridges where passing room is limited. You always have the option to chop the bar to a length you prefer. One final thought on parts choice. Putting slick tires on a belt-driven bike feels a bit counterintuitive. The super-smooth WTB ThickSlicks are designed for the skidding that’s common on brakeless, chain-driven fixies, but they lack the tread that commuters prefer for riding in poor conditions. If you plan on regularly riding your Ace on wet roads, or on streets or paths with any amount of gravel, dirt, sand, or other debris, you’ll probably want to swap out the tires. As for buying an Ace of Spades, you have a positive online shopping experience to look forward to. Priority ships its bicycles to your doorstep 95 percent assembled and includes the tools—and some online videos—to help finish the job. It also has a reputation for excellent customer service, and the team is available to answer questions 365 days a year. Before COVID-19, if you found yourself in New York, you could schedule a time to check out Priority’s bikes in person. The showroom is still open, but for now, all visits are virtual. Just make an appointment through Priority’s website.—Aliya Barnwell
THE TEST ZONE
VENTUM GS1 PRICE: $6,499 (AS T EST ED) / W EIGHT: 18.1 LB ( M )
making aerodynamic bikes for racing against the clock. Its signature model, the z-shaped One, has no down tube and no seatstays. But as this fairly young direct-to-consumer company, founded in Utah in 2015, continues to grow, it’s branching out into more traditional markets. In 2019 it introduced the NS1 road bike, and in 2020 it brought us this gravel bike, the GS1. A gravel bike from a triathlon brand may strike some as unusual, but it’s not the first time a brand has followed this path. Cervélo, a company known for its time-trial and triathlon bikes, introduced the Áspero—one of the finest gravel bikes on the market today—in 2019. Incidentally, Gerard Vroomen, one VENTUM STARTED OUT
of Cervélo’s founders, went on to design gravel bikes such as the influential Open U.P. and U.P.P.E.R., as well as the speedy 3T Exploro RaceMax. Perhaps the journey from time trial and triathlon to gravel is not so weird after all. The carbon GS1 is a decidedly race-style gravel bike. It’s somewhat low, with a position that’s aggressive without being punishing. The frame has some aero shaping (though Ventum provides no data or claims about possible energy-saving benefits), and its hoses, housing, and wires are hidden, entering through an opening in the headset cup. This system is compatible with standardized bar and stem systems, though it does limit how low you can drop the stem: too close to the headset cap and the stem pinches the brake hose. I also wonder about the opening taking in water and grit, which
could turn into sludge that may run down onto the lower headset bearing. The GS1 doesn’t have rack or fender mounts, but it does have spots to affix a top-tube bag and a third bottle mount under the down tube. The fork has a chip with two offset options: The forward position reduces trail for quicker handling, the rear increases trail for more stability. Switching the chip’s position requires repositioning the brake caliper using provided spacers. Ventum also gives the bike a removable front-derailleur mount for a cleaner-looking 1x build and clearance for 48mm tires on 650b wheels and 42mm with 700c wheels. There are three GS1 options to choose from: a frameset for $2,399, a mechanical-shifting build that starts at $2,899, and the one I tested, the Premium Edition, which starts at $5,299 and is
The GS1 gravel bike, from directto-consumer brand Ventum, can be customized online— and returned “no questions asked” if you don’t love it.
Photography by M AT T P H I L L I P S
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the most customizable. All complete bikes have the same frame, fork, and seatpost, and come in five frame sizes and three colors, and Ventum gives you the choice of three Enve wheel upgrades. The Premium Edition lets you choose a Shimano or SRAM electronic shifting drivetrain, a power meter (if you choose SRAM), five Enve handlebar options, three crank lengths (four if you choose Shimano), four stem lengths, and some value-added merch, like a gaiter, sunglasses, or a Ventum tumbler. My test bike was equipped with the awesome Shimano GRX Di2 and my new favorite bar, the Enve SES AR, whose shape and comfort are exceptional. As built, it costs $6,499, which is a decent deal for a carbon bike with a 2x electronic drivetrain and a carbon post, bar, stem, and wheels—better than the big brands offer, but not as sweet as a Canyon with a similar build. Ventum keeps the options in the customizer focused, to avoid bogging you down with choices like valve lengths and bar-tape textures. If you have special requirements for your build, Ventum’s Concierge team will do what it can to facilitate the ask. The Enve SES AR road handlebar on our test bike is our tester’s new favorite bar. You can also opt for the G Series, Enve’s gravel handlebar.
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The bike arrives impressively packaged in a customized box. The bar, stem, and derailleur are already installed; the only assembly required is slotting in the wheels and threading on your pedals. If you ride the bike and don’t love it, you can return it “no questions asked,” says Ventum spokesperson Nils Nilsen. It comes with a 30-day, money-back guarantee and a lifetime warranty on the frame and a five-year crash-replacement program—Ventum will sell you a replacement frame and/or fork at a discount, typically around 40 percent off depending on the age of the frameset and the MSRP listed on the site. For a brand’s first foray into the gravel market, Ventum succeeded in making a bike that offers a mature and refined ride. The GS1 reminds me a lot of the Áspero, actually. It’s stiff and fast-feeling with a frictionless response to changes in tempo and the jump and energy of a good race bike. It seems so tightly coiled, in fact, that I worried it would pummel me as I ventured onto rougher roads and singletrack trails. Thankfully, it didn’t. And while it doesn’t glide over terrain quite like another excellent gravel bike, the Salsa Warbird, it does provide good isolation from bumps both small and large, helping me to feel fresh even on demanding rides. My test bike has 37c WTB Riddler tires on Enve’s new AG25 700c wheels, a dreamily quick and comfortablefeeling combination. I appreciated the predictability of the low-depth rims when battling the crosswinds on open farmland. I spent the bulk of my time riding with the fork in the forward, or quicker-handling, position. And even then, I found the GS1 to be a neutral-to-stable-feeling bike with predictable steering. The trail on my size medium test bike is 76mm—81 in the short-offset position—which is a good amount even for the gravel category (for comparison, the Áspero has about 59mm of trail). So while switching the chip to the rear position increases trail and stability, I’m not sure why you’d want to make the GS1 even slower-steering and more stable. I suspect it has something to do with those who are running 650b wheels. Smaller wheels reduce trail, so by reducing the fork’s offset, the 650b rider will net about the same trail as the one running 700c wheels and more offset. The head angle is fairly slack (70 degrees on a size medium), and with the 50mm offset fork, the GS1 has a generous wheelbase; despite the efficient crispness of the drivetrain, it feels planted and steady. The handling can feel a touch sluggish on roads, but on dirt it balanced the agility/stability teeter-totter well and offered plenty of confidence to get frisky on mountain bike trails. I’ll admit to having reservations about the GS1— how good could a gravel bike from a triathlon brand be? As it turns out, pretty damn great.—Matt Phillips
THE TEST ZONE
GIANT TRANCE X A D VA N C E D P R O 2 9 1 PRICE: $5,700 / W EIGHT: 28.1 LB (M)
X, Giant put together what might be the ideal trail bike for most riders: It’s light, full of energy, efficient, and capable of way more than its travel suggests, and it comes with parts that enhance the ride while making the $5,700 price a decent value. The X in this 29er’s name denotes that it has more travel than the standard Trance. Of the two dozen or so trail bikes I’ve tested in the past two years, that one impressed me the most. At the time, it was revolutionary—a very short-travel (115mm rear) trail bike with geometry getting close to that
seatstays that allow you to slightly change the geometry by backing out two 5mm bolts. It takes only a minute or two, and going to the low setting decreases the head- and seat-tube angles by .7 degrees, drops the bottom bracket by 10mm, and makes slight changes to the chainstay length and reach. I’m not sold on the value of flip chips—and haven’t heard from many riders who choose bikes because of them—but they do give you some ability to alter the bike’s handling to suit your terrain. I mostly kept the Trance in the low setting, even on rocky, pedally, East Coast rides. In the low setting, the frame-geometry numbers are in line with what you’d find on a similarly sized Specialized Stumpjumper or Yeti SB130, but a hair steeper, taller, or shorter. And the Giant’s low weight,
WITH THE TRANCE
of an enduro race bike. It wasn’t the first bike to do that, but it was the first from a big mainstream brand and came in versions at prices a lot of riders could afford. It had a thrilling, intoxicating ride. This bike has 135 millimeters of travel in the back and 150 up front. That’s pretty modest as bikes go these days, and it retains the standard Trance’s stiff frame, light weight, and well-tuned suspension. While the shorter-travel version seemed remarkably wild compared to bikes with similar travel, the numbers on the Trance X are notable for another reason—they’re relatively conservative. That restraint from Giant, however, helped this bike retain the shorter-travel version’s energy while adding some stability in rougher and faster terrain. Giant gave this bike flip chips at the top of the
With the Trance X, Giant built an enegetic and efficient trail bike that will suit a lot of riders really well—at a reasonable price.
Photography by T R E V O R R A A B
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parts selection, and shock tune make it feel easier and more enjoyable to maneuver up climbs or hauling along rolling terrain than either of those two. While those are both excellent models, they feel best when pumping and slashing downhill. This bike does that, too, but with better overall balance. The Maestro suspension is excellent, giving the Trance good pedaling efficiency and lots of control through corners and braking. Except on dirt-road climbs, I kept the Fox DPX2 shock wide open. The shock has a piggyback reservoir that helps it hold more oil, so it runs cooler and performs more consistently on longer descents than standard inline shocks. This version of the bike also comes with Giant’s TRX 2 wheels, which are hookless, made of carbon, and have a 30mm internal width. While the rest of the bike’s components are comparable to ones you’d find on many similarly priced bikes, the wheels set this Trance X apart, keeping weight low and making the overall price a relative value. The only significant thing Giant missed was not using internal sleeves when routing the rear brake hose and derailleur cable through the frame. Without them, the lines rattle as you roll across rocks or down anything but sidewalk-smooth trails. With that minor exception, Giant built a bike that will suit a lot of riders well. And did it at a reasonable price. The progressive, but not crazy, geometry makes it rip when you’re pedaling and feel almost as capable on bigger terrain as bikes with 20 or 30mm more rear travel. For most of us, that’s a really appealing mix.—Louis Mazzante
The FR FRD joins the growing club of simple, modern road bikes with round tubes, traditional parts, and race-bike performance.
F E LT F R F R D U LT I M AT E DURA-ACE DI2 PRICE: $12,999 / W EIGHT: 16.1 LB (58CM)
FOLLOWING THE CURRENT trend of rounder, simpler
The extra canister on the Fox Float DPX2 shock helps keep the suspension consistent— without overheating—on long downhills.
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carbon tubes with no visible aerodynamic styling, the FR FRD (Felt Racing Development) joins the likes of the classic-looking and understated Specialized Aethos and Open MIN.D. Even the 44cm Pro Vibe Carbon handlebar on our 58cm test bike is a departure from the narrow (and aero) bars more commonly found on high-performance bikes. Adding to the Felt’s simplicity is its lack of visible proprietary parts and its inclusion of traditional ones, including a 31.8mm handlebar, a round seat tube that fits in a 27.2mm seatpost, and a 1 ¹ ₈-inch steerer tube (note that our test bike has a tapered head tube). All of this makes for a wider variety of aftermarket parts choices and a more easily upgradable cockpit. The Dura-Ace in this model’s name refers to the Di2 shifters, front and rear derailleurs, hydraulic disc brakes, tubeless-compatible wheels, and crankset. If you want electronic shifting in a cheaper package, the
carbon FR Advanced Ultegra Di2 costs half as much. In a slight twist, the Felt comes outfitted with 25mm tires, with clearance for 28s—most modern road bikes can fit 32s. Narrow rubber aside, the bike delivers an exquisite balance of efficiency, comfort, and control. In fast corners, I appreciated its ability to quickly respond to subtle shifts of my hips. And despite the twitchy back end, the front was slower to respond, resulting in a bike that could dive quickly and confidently into corners without the danger of oversteering. The FR FRD is a traditional, round-tube race bike that offers the performance of a modern road bike without the aero tube shaping and proprietary parts that come with it. It’s light and stiff, with a threaded bottom bracket, round seatpost, normal bar and stem, and tight geometry (40.5mm stays). At $13,000, it’s not cheap, but it’s also not too out of line with bikes like the Dura-Ace Di2-equipped Aethos with similar parts. It’s also not the only model in the FR line, so if you like the bike but not the price, consider the aforementioned Advanced Ultegra Di2 or the $4,999 Advanced Ultegra.—Bobby Lea
Photograph by T R E V O R R A A B
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THE TEST ZONE
WILD RYE FREEL WOMEN’S BIKE SHORT $119
Our testers have raved about these mountain bike shorts in the past, and their performance in our test solidifies their place as our favorite for women. At 220 grams, they’re not the lightest, but the sturdy, four-way-stretch material resists tears, feels great against your skin, and moves well with your body while pedaling. A zippered pocket on the right hip keeps your phone, cash, and keys from ending up on the trail, and SPF 50 in the fabric offers protection from the sun’s harmful rays. Aside from all the nature-inspired patterns, including Poppy (shown), one of the most exciting things about these shorts is that they come in 10 sizes, from zero to 18.
BI R I A PL AZA BASKET $45
The high-performance (and high-priced) Recons proved their worth on both short trail spins and daylong forest romps. A stiff carbon sole provides excellent power transfer and enough flex in the front to make hike-a-bike sections tolerable. The sturdy mesh upper, reinforced with Dyneema, held up well in crashes and scrapes against rocks and felt secure around our feet. We loved the roomy toe box for its ability to keep our tired feet feeling good, even when they swelled during long, hot rides. The proprietary S3 alloy micro-adjust Boa dial system and hook-and-loop straps provide unlimited fine-tuning for an ideal fit.
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Trevor Raab
SPECIALIZED S-WORKS RECON $425
Not e ver y bi ke basket is a breeze to attach. Some come with mounting hardware that, frankly, can be off-putting before you even put it on. And some that are super easy to attach lack the sturdiness you need to carry anything heavier than a croissant. The Biria Plaza is nearly perfect. It comes with an easyto-install quick-release mount that securely attaches to your handlebar and stays there. You simply pop the basket on and off at will. This stylish plastic basket has a comfy handle that lets you gather goods at the market, and is free of large gaps that little things can slip through. It comes in four muted colors and three bright ones. Take your pick.
b
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THE TEST ZONE
WA HO O T ICK R $ 5 0
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H A M M ER H EA D KAROO 2 $399
Scan With Your Camera to Shop the Karoo 2 and Get Exclusive Test Content From Our Editors
With a high-resolution touchscreen, smart features, a clever and userfriendly approach to presenting data, and awesome navigation, the Karoo 2 is built more like a modern electronic device than a GPS cycling computer. Like a smartphone, it runs on Android OS and has a SIMcard slot for data connectivity. It’s arguably the smartest and most advanced cycling computer available right now, and the fact that its overall user experience is clean, simple, and smooth—pre-, post-, and midride—is even more reason to love it.
Trevor Raab
Our test team spends a lot of time using and abusing the latest gear, newest tech, clothing, and accessories in an effort to peel back the layers of marketing hype and determine what’s best for you. We ride over all types of terrain and in all conditions. We train, race, commute, and go on social rides with this gear. Every product in this section has been thoroughly vetted, and only the best of the best earn the Editors’ Choice award. Each item here represents exceptional performance, value, innovation, or a combination of those traits. Simply put, this is the gear that works the best.
The TICKR is a strap-based heart rate monitor that uses Bluetooth and ANT+ technology to connect to your smartphone, GPS watch, and bike computer. It also connects quickly and easily to a PC without an ANT+ dongle—a bonus when riding on virtual platforms. We love that it can broadcast to three Bluetooth devices simultaneously, and it supports concurrent Bluetooth and ANT+ connections. The strap is the most comfortable chest-based device we’ve tested, due in large part to the supple and extremely well-integrated heart rate sensor. The heart-rate pod itself is thin and small, with LED lights that give visual feedback when pairing and reading heartrate data.
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Measuring power and using that data to inform your training is one of the best ways to meet your performance goals. While there are several ways to measure or estimate power, the most accurate is usually to measure a rider’s output somewhere between the pedal and the rear hub. But traditional power meters that attach to the rear hub or crank can be less ideal because they have to fit with ever-evolving changes to a bicycle’s drivetrain standards and technologies. Arguably, then, the best place to measure power is from within the pedal, because if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed on a bicycle, it’s the way in which a pedal threads into a crankarm. For that reason, there’s a slew of new pedal-mounted power meters now, or soon to be available—a good thing for most cyclists, not just pro-level racers.
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MAT T PHILLIPS SENIOR T E S T EDI T OR POWER FACT: YOUR INDOOR FTP IS LOWER THAN YOUR OUTDOOR FTP.
This year, Wahoo Fitness, which acquired Speedplay in 2019, teased a power-meter version of its Speedplay pedals. Garmin rolled out its Rally line of power-meter pedals, a system that offers interchangeable Shimano SPD-SL and SPD (dirt) bodies in addition to Look Keo bodies. And SRAM acquired Time’s pedal business, which is of particular note because SRAM also purchased PowerTap from Saris in 2019. That last bit of news hints strongly at a forthcoming power pedal from SRAM with a Time mechanism—the now-discontinued PowerTap P2 used a Look Keo mechanism, a system that almost all power pedals were based on at one time. These options join the excellent Favero Assioma (my favorite) and SRM’s X-Power (dirt) and EX AKT (road). There’s also a new company called IQ Square, which is touting its downright
cheap power pedals—about $450 for dualsided power—for both road and mountain, though it has yet to ship product. That’s at least five pedal systems to choose from, six if SRAM does road and mountain versions of a Time power pedal. The proliferation of these pedals looks to solve a very real problem for cyclists who wanted to train with power but were put off by the price or complexity of many hub- or crank-mounted systems. Those platforms, imperfect as they are, appeal because the benefits of training with power data is so great. Previous to power, cyclists based their training around heart rate. But heart rate takes a while to ramp up and is subject to the variables of the human body. Stress, hydration, sleep, even how much coffee you’ve had can all affect your heart rate for a given effort, which makes data comparisons
Matt Phillips; Trevor Raab (Phillips)
POWER PEDALS PROVIDE TRAINING DATA WITHOUT LIMITS
Cour tesy Garmn; Couresy Favero; Cour tesy Speedplay
difficult. Power, on the other hand, isn’t as susceptible to variables, and it provides instantaneous information about a rider’s effort. That makes training more targeted and precise, and provides athletes a clearer picture of their effort during a race. “Power data boils down to 100 percent objective performance,” says Frank Overton, founder of FasCat Coaching. As power meters became an important training and racing tool, the number of options on the market rapidly increased. After all, the power meter is a fairly simple device: Strain gauges measure deflection to determine the force, in newton meters, applied by the rider. Force multiplied by cadence (rpm) equals watts. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is figuring out how and where to package the strain gauges, electronics, and batteries into something light, durable, and weatherproof that fits into the tight confines of a bicycle, and still provide consistent and accurate data over long periods of time. Schoberer Rad Messtechnik (SR M) founder Ulrich Schoberer generally gets credit for popularizing—and patenting—the idea in 1986 with his iconic crank that had a power meter in the spider. SRM claims this was the first product that allowed riders to measure their power output in watts while riding. At first, the pros used SRM only on their training bikes—they felt the system was too heavy to race with—but then it got lighter and the UCI implemented its 6.8kg weight limit (the minimum weight for any bike used in a UCI-sanctioned event, which many bikes were under, requiring riders to actually add weight), so power began to find its way onto race bikes, as well. Now, it’s nearly impossible to find a pro cyclist or serious amateur who doesn’t want power data available on every ride. From that early crank-spider system, power-meter makers developed devices that fit on the hub, crankarm, crank axle, and, more recently, the pedals. But like anything, which one is best is a matter of opinion. You can get into the weeds about power-meter placement—some argue its best to measure at the beginning of the power stream (the foot), while others argue that the hub is
best because it is closest to where power translates to forward movement. But some of the biggest challenges for most power-meter locations are the ever-changing standards and technologies that affect a bicycle’s drivetrain area. For example, if you purchased a PowerTap power-meter hub for your road bike in 2016, it was probably made for a 130mmspaced QR axle and rim brakes. Good luck fitting that into a 2021 road bike. And if you bought a left crankarm with a power-meter pod located on the inside, the chainstay shape of your next bike may make your power meter incompatible. Or, if you’re like me, you may have recently gotten a bike fit, and the fitter recommended 170mm cranks, and your power meter has 172.5mm arms. Congratulations on your $1,000 paperweight. Bought a power-meter crank for an 11-speed drivetrain with a BB30 axle and 130mm BCD five-arm spider? That’s probably not going to work on a new Specialized Tarmac SL7 with a SRAM Red AXS drivetrain. The one thing that hasn’t changed in all this madness is how pedals attach to the crank arms, which is why I believe powermeter pedals are the best and most futureproof power-meter investment. You can put new power pedals on a 1980 Motobecane
3 TOP POWER PEDALS
GARMIN RALLY XC200 $1,200 / 451g/pair The Rally XC offers Garmin’s Pedaling Dynamics analysis, which provides next-level pedaling force information, in a dual-sided pedal for mountain bike, gravel, and city riding.
Team Champion as easily as you can install them on that new Tarmac. The universal adaptability of power pedals means there are fewer obstacles to installation, and there’s no need to make a ton of variants to deal with all the different crankarm lengths, chainring sizes, BB standards, drivetrains, and frame standards out there. Plus, you can easily move pedals from bike to bike, and from outdoor bike to indoor bike, so that all your data originates from the same power meter—something coaches love. “If you introduce variability from different power meters, you introduce error,” Overton says. There are downsides to power pedals, of course. Power meters are precision measuring instruments, a category of product that generally does not hold up well to abuse. And pedals get beat up. “Go take a look at your pedals and tell me you want an expensive piece of equipment there,” cautions Overton. And, right or wrong, the category still bears some lingering skepticism from early attempts, like those from Garmin and Look. But those concerns should do little to slow the progress of power pedals. Of all the current systems, it is the easiest to swap between bikes and the best way to protect your expensive investment against alwaysevolving frame and drivetrain standards.
FAVERO ASSIOMA DUO $673 / 303g/pair The Assioma Duo captures power data as well as many competing pedals, but costs half the price. I’ve been on a set for almost two years, and it’s been the most reliable and bug-free electronic gizmo in my garage.
SPEEDPLAY POWRLINK ZERO TBA / 276g/pair (claimed) This summer—July, if everything goes right—Speedplay will bring power measurement to its dual-sided road-pedal system. Claimed weight pegs them as the lightest power-pedal option, and I anticipate that they will come with Wahoo’s user-friendly features.
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HOW TO BE A RIDER MICHELI OLIVER, 24, ADVENTURE PHOTOGRAPHER, DRIGGS, IDAHO
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LET ME EXPLAIN (1) I’ve never been graceful. I fall over, flip over my handlebars, and bail on my bike constantly. But I do so powerfully. (2) Food turns into fuel, and I eat for exactly what my body requires. (3) As an Indigenous person, I don’t go to explore or take from the places I ride. I go to be in reciprocity, always asking what I can do for this world—not what she can do for me. (4) I won the trophy for Most Tenacious on my fourthgrade soccer team, which I realized was a way of saying, “You tried really friggin’ hard.” It’s been my approach since. (5) In high school, I went from being small and fast to curvy and strong, and I’ve never looked back. My curvy womxn strength is what makes me love riding so much. (6) Competition with anyone besides myself is not for me. (7) I’m all legs. I’m convinced that they are 70 percent of my body weight. (8) I don’t like to spend more time than I have to on pavement. I bike to get away from what I already do driving.
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Photograph by A D A M A N D R E S P AW L I K I E W I C Z M E S A