Road Cycling Digest: A Smartwatch with 'Unlimited Battery Life', The Best Fan for Indoor Training, & More
What's going on in the curly bar world? Road Cycling Digest showcases articles from our sister sites, CyclingTips, VeloNews and Peloton Magazine. In each installment, you might find endurance coverage, power-to-weight ratios, gravel bike tech and, of course, lycra.
Revealed: The Cause Of The Australian Team Pursuit Bar Failure
By: Iain Treloar / CyclingTipsFor Australian cycling fans, it was the defining moment of the Tokyo Olympics: the sight of Alex Porter tumbling to the ground, face-first at 65 km/h, in the qualifying round of the men’s team pursuit. The Australian team had fallen victim to a catastrophic equipment failure, with the handlebar unit on Porter’s bike snapping through completely, leaving Porter nowhere to go but down.
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Cool Tool Tuesday #3: Building A Cycling Tool Kit – The Foundations
By: Dave Rome / CyclingTipsImagine that you had the opportunity to start your cycling tool kit from scratch. What tools would you pick first?
It may surprise many, but the tools I’d start with first aren’t cycling-specific. Rather they are the general-purpose hand tools you’d likely find in common across the toolboxes of auto mechanics, electricians, DIYers, and of course, bicycle mechanics.
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2022 BMC URS LT Gravel Bike Review: Ups And Downs Of Integrated Suspension
By: Dave Rome / CyclingTipsSome say every bike is a gravel bike. And while that may be true, the reality is that no one bike will be perfectly optimised for all conditions.
BMC’s Unrestricted, aka URS, is a perfect example of just this. Released in 2019, the URS introduced a mountain bike-like take on what most consider a gravel bike to be. It was designed to match the mixed terrain and high mountain riding that the staff of the Swiss company often found themselves doing. Meanwhile, in the eyes of many others, it was a bike that only further blurred the lines between a gravel bike and a cross-country mountain bike.
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CyclingTips Podcast: The Violence And Silence Behind The UCI’s PR Moment
By: Iain Treloar / CyclingTipsIn this special episode of the CyclingTips podcast, our Senior Features Editor Iain Treloar digs into the evacuation efforts of Afghan cyclists in the wake of the Taliban’s return.
Off the back of months of reporting, we reveal the bullying and blackmail behind a famous cyclist evacuation convoy backed by the UCI – and how the lists had been manipulated by the President of the Afghan Cycling Federation, Fazli Ahmad Fazli, to benefit family and friends instead of cyclists. With UCI backing, they received asylum, and Fazli received a major UCI award.
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Team Bikes Of The 2022 Men’s WorldTour
By: Ronan Mc Laughlin / CyclingTipsIt’s time for our annual look at all the bikes of the World Tour. As the men’s series kicks off first, we will start with a look at the equipment all the teams in the men’s World Tour will rely on in 2022. Unfortunately with the cancellation of a second consecutive Santos Tour Down Under, we once again have to bring you images provided by the teams rather than photos we’ve taken ourselves.
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Bruce Gordon’s Rock ‘n Road Titanium: A Gravel Bike Decades Ahead Of Its Time
By: James Huang / CyclingTipsGravel bikes have exploded in popularity recently for a whole bunch of good reasons. The voluminous multi-surface tires offer acceptable grip on loose ground while still rolling decently quickly on tarmac; they’re not too heavy; their drop bars are more comfortable over longer distances than single-position flat bars; their wide-range gearing offers plenty of climbing prowess; and they offer a lot of the experience people have traditionally sought in conventional road bikes, but now with the luxury of avoiding motorized traffic by heading off-pavement.
But the idea is hardly new.
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Where Are They Now? Cadel Evans, Australian Cycling Icon, 2011 TDF Winner
By: Matt De Neef / CyclingTipst’s a chaotic afternoon in the Evans household. As Cadel appears in the Zoom call, so too do his two young sons, Aidan, 3, and Blake, 16 months. As the 2011 Tour de France champion gets his headphones connected, his boys shriek and squawk as they duck in and out of shot, climbing under and around their dad’s desk. Blake grabs Cadel’s wallet, his headphones case, has a chomp on his dad’s forearm. This is Cadel’s life now.
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Tech Mailbag #2: Drip-on Wax Chain Lube Prep And Bedding-in New Disc Pads
By: Dave Rome / CyclingTipsWelcome to the CyclingTips Mailbag column, where you send us your tech questions, and our team of nerds gives you answers. Got a question about wheel and tire standards? Want to know how to diagnose that weird shifting issue? Wondering where that darn ticking sound is coming from?! Send your questions our way at tech@cyclingtips.com to be featured in an upcoming CT Mailbag column.
In this second edition, Dave Rome addresses the commonly asked question about prepping a new chain for drip-on wax chain lube, how to run Di2 on a frame that previously had mechanical shifting, and whether new disc brake pads need bedding-in in a previously bedded-in brake system.
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Tested: What Is The Best Fan For Indoor Training?
By: Ronan Mc Laughlin / CyclingTipsIndoor training has changed radically over the past decade. It’s not so long ago a blank wall was the most common form of trainer entertainment. Repeats of old races were about as interactive as indoor riding got. Nowadays we can enjoy smart trainers, virtual worlds, and even artificially intelligent training plans.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the sweating. Indoor training gets hot, quickly!
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Introducing Our New Weekly Cycling Show, VENGA
By: Wade Wallace / CyclingTipsIn 2012 and 2013 I was fortunate to co-host an online cycling show called The Bike Lane with Matt Keenan and Scott McGrory. Working with those guys and the rest of the crew was a highlight of my career, but sadly it came to an end. Even a show as seemingly simple as this cost many thousands of dollars per episode to make, and we had pulled in far too many favours to keep the show going without some proper sponsorship behind it. Sadly it wasn’t sustainable.
I’d always had in the back of my head getting this type of show running again, and finally, nearly a decade later, we’ve done it. I’m thrilled to bring to you our new weekly cycling show called VENGA.
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The Rich Get Richer: Ten Takeaways From The Classics’ Opening Weekend
By: Peloton MagazineThe sport’s biggest teams flexed their collective muscles over the action-packed weekend that featured the opening of classics seasons with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, a battle of grand tour contenders at the UAE Tour and a pair of thrilling French one-day races at Faun-Ardèche and La Drôme. At Omloop, Wout van Aert stormed to the first cobbled classics win of the season behind a new-and-improved Jumbo-Visma one-day squad; Tadej Pogačar confirmed his status as the general classification rider to beat once again in 2022 by defending his UAE Tour overall title; and Fabio Jakobsen saved QuickStep’s opening weekend with an absolutely vicious sprint to win Kuurne on Sunday.
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Tracing the Berlin Wall
By: Paolo Ciaberta / Peloton MagazineI’ve been to Berlin several times, and the question that I ask myself is always the same: “Where was the Wall?” The location of the Berlin Wall is documented in very few places, because immediately after its fall in 1989 and according to the predominant feeling of the time—”the Wall has to fall”—it was taken down so thoroughly that almost all traces of the border were erased. Today, most people agree that this was a mistake, and I think so too. It is always a mistake to erase the past from the memory of people, so I decided to trace the entire path of what was one of the most moving and symbolic structures of the 20th century.
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Korean Mtn Adventure
By: Andy Bokanev / Peloton Magazine“One is enough,” he said in broken English after he and his fellow waiter watched me grab two bottles of soju, the local vodka-like liquor, from the fridge and haul them to my table.
“One is enough,” he repeated. I nodded and smiled: “You don’t know me.” Thus went my first night in Seoul, South Korea. A few weeks earlier I was invited by the clothing brand Rapha to take part in a Korean edition of the Prestige—part-adventure ride, part-team time trial, part-brevet in which four-person teams take on a long and arduous course. It is not officially a race but, trust me, everyone knows who “won” and who “lost.” This particular edition was based in the Taebaek region. Now, I consider myself to be well versed in geography, and can generally find any given place, but trying to find this one brought me to Google Maps.
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Live Forever in Sardinia
By: Clive Pursehouse / Peloton MagazineLast year’s 100th Giro d’Italia set off in Sardinia, an ancient island 300 kilometers across the Tyrrhenian Sea from Italy’s mainland. Though definitively Italian, Sardinians are Sardinian first. Like many of Italy’s southern provinces, the economy and local job prospects here tend to lag behind the northern powerhouses of Milan, Turin and Venice. In spite of missing out on that northern prosperity, Sardinians may have figured out the secret of the truly prosperous: a long life. Sardinia is one of the world’s five “blue zones,” where life expectancy is much higher than average. And the small Sardinian mountain village of Seulo, about 70 kilometers north of Cagliari, is the world’s bluest of zones—scientifically the place on earth where people tend to live the longest.
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Dreams of Bikepacking
By: Paolo Ciaberta & Simone Bracco / Peloton MagazineKeep a steady pace…breathe…follow the trails…breathe…leave the trails behind… breathe…look around…breathe…stop and recover…breathe…open your jacket, don’t sweat too much and breathe, breathe, breathe. Never forget to breathe—not for the lungs, which is an involuntary gesture, but for the mind, a reactionary gesture.
A long weekend on the bike, enchanting mountains, dirt roads and starry skies. The upper Val di Susa in Italy’s Piedmont region is magnificent; some roads are easier, some more difficult, but at the end of the day they’re always worth the effort. Don’t ask us “who” makes us do it, just ask us “what” makes us do it? Our answer is in these images.
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Garmin Instinct 2 gets ’Unlimited Battery Life‘
By: Greg Kaplan / VeloNewsJust weeks after Garmin officially launched the latest update to the Fenix line of wearables and reintroduced the Epix 2, the Kansas-based company that’s nearly synonymous with consumer GPS devices and wrist-based performance-monitoring devices rolled out another update an existing product line – and threw down the gauntlet to its competitors with regards to battery life.
The Garmin Instinct 2 Series not only promises to add some color to your wrist-based GPS and activity monitor but also makes a bold claim of unlimited battery life for some models in the lineup.
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Kit Critic: How Black Style Is Transforming Cycling
By: Aliya Barnwell / VeloNewsPicture a rider climbing a grade so steep they have to stand. They dance their way around the switchback of a snow-dusted col, later descending gracefully, knee slightly pointed into the corner. At the bottom of the descent, the genteel cyclist sits at the outdoor table of a petit cafe, slammed bike in their line of sight, kit aero, helmet and shoes white, legs crossed, and coffee in hand.
This is the language of many idealized cycling ads. Now, what color was that cyclist in your mind’s eye?
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Important Strength Training Concepts For Cycling
By: Hannah Otto (Finchamp) / VeloNewsStrength training can be a vital part of any cyclist’s training routine. With busy schedules and limited training time, you want to make the most of every minute. It can be challenging to know what things to target and what exercises to do to get the most bang for your buck in the gym.
Here are some basic guiding principles to help you make your gym workout cycling-specific.
(Read more.)
Zwift addresses weight-doping hack, and temporary ban of a user who flagged it
By: Ben Delaney / VeloNewsJust ahead of the UCI esports world championship on its platform, Zwift banned an avid user from full participation in its virtual cycling platform for publicly detailing a way to cheat during Zwift racing by changing a rider’s weight.
After the situation escalated, Zwift CEO Eric Min stepped in, apologized to the user, and rescinded the ban. Here’s what happened.
(Read more.)
This Olympic Champion Speed Skater Trains On The Bike 30 Hours Per Week
By: Zach Nehr / VeloNewsLike many Olympic tales, this is a story that transcends sport. When Swedish speed skater Nils van der Poel toed the starting line of the 10,000m at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, he visualized that he’d already won. After his expected smashing of the competition – earning a world record in the process – van der Poel told everyone how he had done it. In a comprehensive guide called, “How to skate a 10k… and also a half 10k.” van der Poel detailed his training from May 2019 to February 2022.
In this document, van der Poel (unrelated to that van der Poel, by the way) bore all. Not only did he include his day-by-day training calendar, but he also penned a personalized story that was much a diary as a clinical study.
(Read more.)
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Also, Cadel Evans, for the yutes here, was a pro mountain biker for years before moving to the road.
Anyway, a quick summary that you can altogether skip easily from the home page or selectively read the one thing that interests you. I don't think it benefits anyone to remove choices when all they do is improve things for some of us. It's like real life...you don't use all of your health benefits most of the time (if you have them, or if you're Canadian), but it doesn't hurt that they're there. Moreover, PB is free so you don't have to pay for anything at all anyway.
My wife's Fenix 5s just died on her a few days ago (probably water ingress during a swim, 3 1/4 years old) and Garmin have offered to replace it with another unit for $178 NZD, less than 1/4 of the price of a new one here. Same kind of deal with fixing broken screens on our edge 520 units at a very low cost.
They have also replaced multiple heart-rate monitors that have died early. Garmin seem to either have amazing reliability or warranty. Either way the customer experience has been great.
I will most definitely be buying another Fenix when (if) mine dies.
also road bikes have adopted integrated headsets and internal cable routing, in extreme cases routing it through the stem, so in a way they are very much changing as fast as mtb but in a different way, its growing as a categorie where as mtb is changing the actual bike darastically like travel and HTA. Cheers!
But again, I'm limiting this to nice weather, dry pavement.
Anyone could have come to the same exact conclusions over a case of beer and some day old pizza
PS: I kinda miss POD/VOD just saying
we need to bring this back
Raise your hand if you're still an OG Freeride, DH, DJ type...
The Pinkbike scene is getting frustrating, the E-Bikes, Waterbottles, and Lycra...
This is being used as filler because the majority of PB staff and contributors don't produce much beyond: product reviews; "Look Where I Went Riding" videos; and "Let's talk to some local riders."
It seems common causes for this in an organization are:
-The financial rewards are simply not there to motivate staff to do more than the bare minimum.
-Some people are being rewarded for mediocrity based on their willingness to kiss ass.
-There's a lack of leadership/imagination from the editor or whoever's supposed to be steering this ship.
1x In memoriam
4x Reposts of pro riding videos
2x Product releases
1x Interest article on the classic bike
2x Clickbait to paywalls (the unashamed beta advert, and this aggregate post).
Maybe this sample isn't reflective of the usual balance of outputs, it could certainly be better, but it's a mix that I'm okay with on a slower news day. I get that editors have minimal input to 6/10 of these, but where is the line on exposure to the releases by the athletes. Sure, it can get spammy, but PB aren't going to not share rider's engagement content.
The In memoriam is from Yeti
Reposts are... reposts
Product releases come from the brands
The classic bike video was made by Paul Brodie and there is no article. It's another repost.
Ads for Beta and this one are just that.
By some stretch of the imagination you could say Alicia wrote a whole 551 words on the Madnes bike check... But if you read it, in reality it's not a bike check, but a press release. I wouldn't even be sure if it was actually Alicia that wrote the copy, or she just posted what she got from the brand. I mean... that's how this type of "article" works in my industry, but what do I know.
So far, there are no actual articles on PB today. Pretty much an aggregate/repost page.
Checked yesterday: same but only 4 instead of 10 entries.
9th March was a bit better: 13 entries including 3 real articles if we're generous and include the one from Abi (it's an original article, not a repost, but from a user/contributor, not PB staff).
But man, the bad days sure seem to be outrunning the good lately. And if you look back at the same time previous years the feed looks quite different. January-March had writers doing things like visiting the ENVE factory and asking point blank why their wheels blow up so often. Have we seen an article like that in the past 6 months?
Look at how Ben Cathro's video series. It was high-quality, yet neither original nor hard-hitting. He invested some time on it and the results were obvious. The same is true with the converse of that.
There's simply a stubborn lack of creativity. You pay me to write for an MTB magazine and that means I write, content. If I don't write anything good until stories fall into my lap then something's wrong.
I agree with your coments, but I find the fact that it's all clickbait to pay for articles frustrating.
I agree, and I will admit I ride a road bike, I always have done alongside my mountain bike. I'm not a roadie, I'm a cyclist, anything self propelled on two wheels is fine by me.
I don't read road websites as I'm not that invested but having a quick overview once in a while is a good read