cycling

Reasonably priced bike gear

Cycling is expensive. Any activity that requires equipment is going to involve some expense, and cycling’s equipment requirements are fractal in nature. You don’t just get a bike, you get clothing. You don’t just get clothing, you get warm-weather clothing, and foul-weather clothing, and cold-weather clothing. You get tools, and not just tools, but tools you carry on the bike and tools you use at home. And so on.

As with most things, you reach a point of diminishing returns in terms of price:performance as you spend more and more money on bike stuff. Where that point lands is an interesting question. There are some good deals out there.

I am in the USA and writing this mostly for a U.S. audience. I’m a roadie so that’s what I know.

Bikes

There are often closeouts on last year’s model of bike, and there are some ebay vendors that seem to specialize in this: here’s one. They have a top-end 2021 model listed for less than half its original retail price (but still very expensive).

The difference between this year’s model and last is usually trivial or nonexistent. Every few years, manufacturers will roll out new versions of their models, but these are not generally earthshaking changes.

Note that when buying a bike this way, it still needs a fair amount of setup work, some of which might not be obvious. You’ll either need to be a competent bike mechanic or hire one to set it up, which will offset some of the discount. Shipping will also be a chunk of change.

There are a number of direct-to-consumer bike brands now. I haven’t ridden any of these, but they’ve been favorably reviewed.

As of this writing, a Trek Domane SL5 is listing for $3500, compared to $2000 for a Canyon Endurace CF7 or $1800 for a Fezzari Empire Sport (on sale right now). These are all carbon-framed endurance bikes equipped with Shimano 105 (11-speed)—very respectable, especially for a cycling newcomer. There may be differences in “finishing kit”—saddle, handlebars, etc—and tires that change the balance somewhat.

There are benefits to buying a bike from a local bike shop. They normally throw in a tune-up for free, and will often let you substitute parts to make the bike suit you better for cost. And that’s something you should be prepared for: the stem might be the wrong length, the handlebars the wrong width, the saddle might just be wrong. And there is a benefit in having a relationship with a local bike shop. But damn, that’s a big price difference to overcome. You can pay retail for new saddle, stem, and bars and still come out way ahead. As with a remaindered bike, it would probably be a good idea for cycling newcomers to pay a shop to set up their consumer-direct bike, even though those consumer-direct brands do a better job of shipping the bikes in a ready-to-ride condition.

Clothes

Cycling kit can be ludicrously expensive. The brand that seems to be at the top of the heap, Assos, has a jacket they charge $700 for. Most of us aren’t riding at a level where we can benefit from the marginal performance improvements at those high prices. Here’s some recommendations:

  • The Black Bibs. Basic designs. Three grades of bib shorts: I’ve got the cheapest ($40) and the most expensive ($80). The expensive ones aren’t as nice as my (much more expensive) Castellis, but they’re absolutely good enough for most riding.
  • Wiggle’s house brand DHB. Wiggle is a UK sporting-goods vendor. They’ve got a few tiers of clothing products that span a wider price range than The Black Bibs. With the post-pandemic bike bust, they’ve been having financial difficulties, and I read that they might be suspending sales outside the UK, but for now, they still seem to sell internationally.
  • Galibier. A small UK-based brand. I’ve gotten quite a bit of foul-weather gear from them. Good quality, reasonable prices.
  • NeoPro. Another inexpensive U.S. brand. As far as I can tell, these guys have one tier of product in everything, and their pricing looks to be in the midrange compared to The Black Bibs. I have not bought from them.

I don’t have any recommendations for shoes. I’ve got one pair of Pearl Izumi cleats that fit me fine, and another from the same brand that I can’t get comfortable in (and would like to sell, if you’re interested). Fit is so contingent on the individual.

Accessories

There are a lot of expensive accessory brands and some reasonably priced accessory brands, but I’m not aware of any distinct bargains. Cheap tools are never a bargain in my experience.

I’ve always had good luck with pumps and tools from Lezyne, and tools from Pedro’s—Pedro’s makes the best tire levers.

If you are jumping into cycling, you should budget for some of this stuff: You should carry on your bike a mini pump, a couple of tubes, a set of tire levers, and a multi-tool. And have some place to store all this stuff—in your jersey pockets, a seat bag, etc. At home, you probably want at least a floor pump. A set of hex wrenches and other hand tools is nice but not necessary. Wera makes excellent tools and their Tool Check Plus is a nice compact home toolkit that’s a good value.

Dynamo hubs, USB converters, power banks, and phones

My bike has a SONdelux dynamo hub and I recommend it to anyone interested in distance riding, especially when self-sufficiency is important. I also ride with a power bank, and use my iPhone in lieu of a bike computer. A lot of cyclists dismiss using phones rather than dedicated head units, citing battery-life problems. If you use your phone exactly as you would use a head unit, battery life would be a problem, but you can use a phone differently, in a way that gives good battery life: leave the screen dark and rely on periodic spoken status announcements. For the kind of riding I do, this is fine. Both the Ride with GPS app and the Cyclemeter app can do this, possibly others. Even so, in a multi-day self-supported event, you still need to optimize your phone charging.

I have tried a few different mounting systems for my phone, and Quadlock, which makes the mount I am using currently, does offer a mount with a built-in Qi charger. I’ve tried it, it does work, but the mount is huge and charges less efficiently than the charging port. If you use one of these, you will end your ride with less charge than you started with. If you plug into the charging port, you can keep the phone at 100% charge.

You can charge the phone from the dyno via a USB rectifier (I have this, which is part of a kit with a dyno-powered headlight), or you can hook up a power bank in series and charge your phone and other electronics using pass-through charging. I’ve tried two different power banks at this point: the Nitecore and this Anker model. They both have the same capacity: 10k mAh. The Nitecore, attractively, is the smallest and lightest power bank with that capacity, but the Anker has a couple useful features. One is that it has a Qi charger on its body. This could be important if your phone’s charging port gets wet (this has happened to me on a long ride–it can take a long time for that port to dry out once wet): you can’t charge via the port when it’s wet, but with a Qi charger, you can still charge wirelessly. I also found that my bone-conduction headset draws so little power when it’s charging that the Nitecore pretends it’s not there, but the Anker recognizes it, and even has a special trickle mode. Note: I’ve got an older Nitecore. It looks like the new model also has trickle charging.

Both of these power banks do support pass-through charging, but they behave differently when receiving power from a dyno hub. If you are charging your phone via pass-through charging with the Nitecore, power is available from a very low speed–maybe 4 mph. The Anker requires a higher threshold to pass through the charge–maybe 9 mph–and on one day, I found that my speed was hovering around that threshold for a long time, so the phone was constantly entering and exiting a charging state. This is annoying if nothing else, and probably not great for the phone.

I also found that one of the iPhone cables I was carrying (I had a few) was fussy about its power source–it would not charge my phone when plugged into the USB rectifier, but it would charge from the power bank.

A smart setup might be to get two 5k mAh chargers (perhaps this), with one strictly receiving a charge from the dyno and the other discharging to power your other electronics, swapping the two as needed. This is slightly less efficient, but offers some redundancy.

Here’s a visual breakdown of the various charging schemes I discuss.

Ride report: Ontario, OR

I got off to a reasonably early start after sleeping like the dead. The weather was cloudy and cool, which was a nice change from the day before.

The first part of the day was riding along a dam reservoir on the Snake River. That was flat at least. Kind to my knees and easy for me to manage with my reduced power, although just the climb out of the river valley, starting at the Idaho border, was a challenge. This was followed immediately by a more serious climb that was just a slog. At the summit, traffic was stopped. There was a vehicle fire about a quarter of a mile down the road. I chatted with a couple of old-timers while we waited for emergency services to make the scene safe, which took the better part of an hour. No one was hurt, as far as I know.

Descended into the small town of Cambridge, ID. Rode around it a little to see what my dining options were–weirdly, the only restaurant on the map was a Chinese restaurant, but I found a coffee-and-sandwich place and stopped there to eat and assess.

Looking at my planning spreadsheet, I would be hitting one of the toughest climbs of the race, Lolo Pass, in a day or two. I didn’t think my knees could take it, and even if my knees weren’t a problem, my power output was so diminished I was worried about getting up it. I was already using my lowest gear on climbs that were hard but not that hard. I didn’t know how I’d get up Lolo Pass. Cambridge also looked like my best bailout option for a very long time, since I was pretty close to Boise.

I talked to Gwen about it for a while, but in the back of my mind, I knew it was over. One piece of advice I read for prospective racers was that you need to be really clear with yourself about why you’re doing this, because you will need that focus to sustain you through some very hard parts. I think that’s true, and I think my own reasons were nebulous. I’ll add to that: you need to really believe that what you’ll get out of it is worth what you put into it. Because you will put a lot into it. The juice needs to be worth the squeeze, and I realized right then that for me, it wasn’t. So I didn’t get what I wanted out of the race, but I did get something: knowledge of self.

Janie Hayes, who finished the TABR twice with fast times, wrote about scratching in the Tour Divide. I read that when I was preparing for TABR 2021, and was a bit mystified by it at the time, but it makes more sense to me now.

When I reentered cellular coverage in Cambridge, I also learned that a racer I had spent a fair amount of time around had since been diagnosed with Covid. I had no obvious symptoms, but it was concerning. I wondered if I had a mild case that was just bad enough to blunt my performance.

I did some checking and found a town with an Enterprise rent-a-car agency in Ontario, OR, roughly halfway to Boise, and without further ado, decided to ride there, rent a car from them, and road-trip home. Fortunately, that leg of the ride was mostly downhill–I was going fast enough to fool myself into thinking I was riding strongly, all of a sudden, and regretted my decision to scratch, but as soon as I hit even a bit of a climb, my regret went away. I incidentally saw the truck that had caught fire on the summit before Cambridge, being hauled on a flatbed. I stopped in the town of Weiser to get a snack and e-mail Nathan, the race director, word that I was scratching.

My first stop in Ontario was at a drugstore to get a home Covid test. I rented a hotel room and took the test: negative–I have to admit it would be nice to be able to blame scratching on it.

Next, arranging a car rental. Turned out not to be as simple as I thought. Enterprise seems to be the only car-rental agency with locations away from airports, but what I was quickly learning is that only the airport locations (for any rental agency) offer one-way rentals, which I needed. What I also learned is that even many of those airport locations would not offer a one-way rental, but Avis would. I booked the reservation online. I resolved to get an early start the next day, ride to Boise’s airport, and pick up a car. I had a plan. I was looking forward to taking a little road trip at this point, and made arrangements to see a couple friends along the way.

While this is going on, dot-watchers on the TABR facebook group have noticed I’m off course. From my hotel room, I checked in on the group and let them know I had scratched. Cody, a dot-watcher in Boise, offered to help me out, and we arranged for him to meet me partway between Ontario and Boise–I really didn’t relish riding my bike into the airport, which are generally not bike-friendly places.

So the next day I start riding toward his house and he texts me the location of an intercept point where we meet. He also took me to buy street clothes, let me shower, and then delivered me and my stuff to the airport. A real mensch.

At the Avis desk, I learned that I could not rent a car on a one-way rental from them without a physical credit card in hand that they could swipe. I was not carrying a credit card. I had the info for a credit card saved on my phone, and I had a debit card, but that wasn’t good enough. There was nothing I could say that would change their mind. They told me that all the other rental agencies had the same policy.

Time for a new plan. I need to fly home.

I get in touch with Cody again and we strategize. I book a flight departing that evening. He meets me at the airport, takes me and my bike to a bike shop (Bauer Haus, a real candy-store of a bike shop) that will pack and ship it. I took Cody and his daughter to lunch (meager compensation for their trouble), then they delivered me back to the airport. I had a connection in Denver and walked in my front door at 1:30 AM.

Packed and ready

Take to the Sky, ready to go

Apart from a handful of small items I’ll need between now and tomorrow morning, my bike is ready for the Trans Am Bike Race.

My self, that’s another matter.

Accessory mounting plates for aerobars

Updated–see end of post

I’ve written before about different options for mounting gadgets on aerobars. None of them really address the needs of bikepacking cyclists, who may want to have two sets of lights, two computers, and possibly other stuff out front, so I’m taking matters into my own hands and having a couple of designs fabbed up by SendCutSend.

Both designs use four lateral slots with P-clamps to attach to the aerobars with some positioning flexibility. I’ve found a source for high-quality, dimensionally precise P-clamps with silicone coating for a little vibration damping. Both designs require straight sections of aerobars to clamp to, and will work better on “J-bend” bars than “S-bend.”

Each design has its pros and cons.

The first one (“New York Style”) is being produced out of thin 6061 aluminum, but could be made of carbon fiber. It gives a little more room for different attachments, and might be a better basis for a single do-it-all mounting base.

The second (“Chicago Style”) is being produced out of .25″ 6061 aluminum (could get it as thick as 0.5″). This is thick enough to tap the holes, which obviates the need for separate nuts (or other fixtures). There are some limits on what SendCutSend can do–for instance, it can’t tap an M3 hole in a thicker plate than this. Because of the material’s inherent rigidity, the fore and aft slots can be closer together. This lets it fit on bars where there’s a relatively short straight section, which might make it feasible on S-bend bars.

Both designs provide a bunch of mounting holes for specific purposes. I’ve got one set of AMPS holes for installing a Quadlock mount. The New York Style plate has a few Garmin/Wahoo combo hole patterns, holes for mounting a bottle cage, and holes for GoPro bases–these serve as a sort of universal adapter for lots of gadgets. Many kinds of headlights can be used with a GoPro adapter; there are also Garmin/GoPro adapters, which give you control over the viewing angle. This particular iteration of the Chicago Style plate has fewer mounting options.

Update

I’ve received my first “New York style” prototype, mounted it, and taken it for a good test ride. The plate is 0.125″ 6061 aluminum and it feels much more solid in the hand than I expected. The plate by itself is 89 grams; with bar clamps, a Garmin mounting “biscuit” and a couple of GoPro mounts, 195 g. On a “grams per gadget” basis, this works out heavier than most out-front mounts, but not by a big factor. I’ve also received but not used my “Chicago style” prototype, and despite being twice as thick, the smaller footprint means it’s about 10 g lighter. A slightly longer center section would make it more functional.

The plate itself is a little rough around the edges, literally. The fabrication service I used doesn’t offer edge-chamfering. If they did, I’d use it. That said, unless you plan to spend a lot of time stroking its perimeter, this won’t be a problem.

It was absolutely solid and silent on my ride. Having received it and used it, I can see some ways to optimize it. It’s definitely overbuilt.

Interested in getting one of these? I am soliciting input for a small production batch..

A prototype of a plate for mounting accessories between aerobars

Shown with 2 headlights, a Quadlock phone mount, and a Garmin mount,

Shown with 2 headlights, a Quadlock phone mount, and a Garmin mount,

Shown with 2 headlights, a Quadlock phone mount, and a Garmin mount,

Finally, I’ve developed a variation on the “Chicago style” plate above that you might call “Chicago style with everything” — this has room for two Garmin 830s, a headlight, and a water bottle. Or skip the water bottle and add an undermount headlight. Or skip the Garmins and add a phone. This measures slightly less than 100 × 200 mm. This is realistically about as much will fit.

A design for an accessory mounting plate

Pace Bend Ultra 2022

On February 5–6, I competed in the Pace Bend Ultra. There were a number of divisions: 6-hour, 12-hour, 24-hour, solo and teams, men, women, and mixed (for teams). The idea is you ride around a loop as many times as you can until you reach your time limit. I competed in the 24-hour solo division. This was my first attempt at anything like this.

This would have been difficult under ideal conditions, and the conditions were not ideal. The overnight low was forecast to be 25°F; I had the temperature displayed on my bike-computer app, and when it was showing 31°F, I heard that the actual temperature measured on the course was 27°F. That’s really cold. I’ve commuted at roughly that temperature, but my bike commute takes 22 minutes each way. I was very anxious about the cold in the days before the race, and I wasn’t sure if my preparations would be adequate.

The course is a 6.2-mile loop inside Pace Bend Park, about an hour’s drive outside of Austin. Apparently the course used to be notorious for it’s “meteor impact” pavement, but a couple of years ago it was resurfaced, and is currently pretty nice.

The race started at noon on Saturday, with all the 12-hour and 24-hour riders departing together. This being a time trial, drafting is not allowed, but because of the relatively crowded mass start, we had a pass for the first lap.

My first two laps I was running hot—the trick with distance riding is to keep your level of exertion in a limited range—not too high, so you don’t burn all your matches prematurely. I was a little worried about that, but by the third lap, I was able to get it under control. I later heard from another racer who felt the same.

I had looked at the course elevation profile beforehand, and was not too concerned about the hills: 312 feet of climbing per lap, or about 50 feet per mile. No big deal. What I didn’t realize until I was a few laps into it is that while none of the hills are particularly difficult, you’re never not on a hill. You never have a chance to hunker down and motor. I was constantly finding I was in the wrong gear.

My fueling strategy worked pretty well. I spent a fair amount of time researching that, and while I learned a lot, I ultimately went with my gut (sorry). I made up a batch of big oatmeal-raisin cookies, and a bunch of small chicken-salad tacos. Every 2nd and 4th lap, I would eat a cookie, and every 6th lap I would eat a taco. I would need to pull into my pit station to eat the taco, which was fine—on the advice of a more experienced ultra rider, I planned on taking a pit stop every six laps anyhow; I’d refill the cookies I was carrying when I did that. Eating the cookies while riding was a little more difficult to manage than I anticipated, but I’m sure I could solve that problem. My hunger went up and down—there were points when I was really hungry, and then later, not too hungry. I was able to stick to this eating schedule pretty closely for all my time on the bike, but once it got dark, I decided it would be better to stop to eat my cookies than to eat them on the fly. I thought about using liquid fuel, and ultimately decided against. During training, I experimented with some liquid options, and they didn’t sit well in my stomach. I also tend to under-hydrate, so even on a hot ride, I wouldn’t get a lot of calories that way. According to the Training Peaks estimate (I don’t have a power meter on my bike), I burned 10,500 calories, which sounds about right. About half of that probably came from stored fat (which would be less than 2 lb).

At 6 hours, I felt like there was a turning point in the event. It was getting dark and cold, everyone had burned off the last shred of nervous energy, and we were all settling into the pace that we’d maintain for the rest of the race. It was at about this point that I started adding layers for warmth. I started out wearing a high-tech base layer, a jacket, cold-weather shorts, leg warmers, cool-weather gloves, insulating wool socks, and lightweight booties. At around this point, I added a beanie under my helmet and a wool base layer. Later I would add a fleece neck buff, my rain jacket, and a pair of running tights; I also swapped my gloves for warmer ones.

At 11 hours, I discovered the warming tent. It was not especially warm—I could see my breath in there—but it was warmer. It wasn’t provided by the event organizers, but by a team: there were some people helping their teammates providing de-facto neutral support, and they gave me soup and hot chocolate in addition to a warm place to sit and socialize with other racers taking breaks.

At 12 hours, I had all my extra layers on and still couldn’t get warm—I was shivering uncontrollably in my core. One of the guys in the warming tent who was there in a support capacity lent me his jacket (which was big enough to fit over the 4 layers I was already wearing) and it made a huge difference.

At 13 hours, I was riding a little erratically on the road, and I was really worried about my ability to ride through the coldest part of the night. When I stopped in the warming tent, I realized I could take a nap and just sleep through that part, and I gave myself permission to do that. My attitude and riding improved immediately.

At 15 hours, I decided to take that nap in the warming tent, where there was a cot. I had a sleeping bag with me, but I never really got comfortable enough to sleep. It was miserable. At some point I moved from the cot to a reclining folding chair, and while I didn’t sleep there either, I found it more restful.

At 20 hours, just before 8 AM, I ended my pretend-nap, at which point the sun was out and the temperature had risen to the freezing point. I was not very refreshed, but I was riding a lot better than when I had stopped for my so-called nap.

At 21 hours, the 6-hour division started. While there were obviously some hardcore time-trialists in the 12- and 24-hour divisions, the 6-hour division had a higher percentage—I think that was the only division where people were using disk wheels. They would rocket past me on their TT bikes like I was standing still. There was also one hapless guy in the 6-hour division who must have seen an ad for the event and thought “that sounds like fun.” He was riding a hybrid, wearing basketball shorts and knee socks. It was clear he was not an experienced rider. I think he rode two or three laps and packed it in. I can only imagine how he felt lining up at the start with guys who looked like they were riding spaceships.

Gwen also showed up around this time with food. She crammed a homemade biscuit with gravy in my mouth. I was glad to see her.

At 23 hours and 15 minutes, I packed it in. At that point, my lap time was about 30 minutes (partial laps are not counted), so I could have squeezed in one more lap, but I was starting to ride erratically, and decided it wasn’t worth it.

At the end of the race, I learned that I was one of only two competitors who didn’t have a car to warm up in. I think that made a difference. There’s no telling how I would have fared if I had been able to warm up every few laps, or if I had been better insulated, but if I had ridden through that five-hour pretend nap at my last-lap pace, my distance would have been right around 300 miles, which I had predicted to be my “realistic-optimistic” distance.

I knew, but kind of forgot, that my body cannot regulate its temperature when I’m exhausted: if it’s the slightest bit cold, it’s hard for me to warm up. I definitely experienced that in the race. Part of the problem is that as I get worn out, I can’t push myself as hard and can’t raise my heart rate, so I’m generating less heat, but there’s something else at work too. I’ll need to be careful to be better insulated if I do anything like this again.

Final results: 241.8 miles, 39 laps. 2nd place in the men’s solo 24-hour upright-bike division (out of five), first in my age group. My actual time in motion was 15:34.

Experiments mounting a phone to clip-on bars

I’ve been playing around with the best way to mount my phone and headlight on the aerobars of my distance bike. This is a weird setup: most cyclists use bike computers that are considerably smaller than my iPhone 11, most don’t also have a bike light hanging from the same mount, and most definitely don’t have both of those mounted to clip-on bars instead of their regular handlebars.

I started with this bridge-style mount I found on AliExpress. It’s a mixed bag. The aluminum parts—the bridge, the computer-mount base, and the GoPro mount—are well made. The plastic parts—the bar clamps and Garmin mounting “biscuit”—are worthless: both the Garmin base and clamps quickly cracked. I like the bridge design, and thought it might give me more flexibility to mount other stuff, but in reality, it gets pretty crowded on the bars, and having two clamping points just makes it harder to adjust the clip-on bars.

I wound up getting Kevin Brown to machine a couple of very skookum aluminum clamps to replace the original plastic clamps, and I used the business end of a QuadLock intended for a motorcycle to replace the original mounting base; this is reinforced with some Sugru to stabilize it on the bridge.

This works. This is the setup I used in my abbreviated attempt at TABR 2021, and it didn’t give me any trouble. It is absolutely stable, but it is kind of heavy for what it is: 124 g.

The QuadLock mounting mechanism is excellent. I tried using the QuadLock mount by itself, but couldn’t quite get the phone positioned right, and in any case that didn’t give me a way to mount my headlight. There’s an articulated arm between the Quadlock mechanism and the bar clamp with toothed interfaces at each end, so that the angles between parts are stepped; the arm also has a little rise to it. The mount is all injection-molded plastic, and is probably adequate but nothing special. In hindsight, it looks like using a QuadLock out front mount pro sideways on a clip-on bar might work.

I then tried out this mount from 76 Projects. This is all 3D-printed and shot-peened plastic (a manufacturing method I’ve never heard of before), except for the screws that hold it together. It clocks in at 47 g. It uses velcro straps to mount to the bars, and comes with a set of spacer tubes to make up the space between the central mount and the strap blocks. Getting the spacers exactly right is fiddly, but you only need to do it once. The spacers and central mount fit together with toothed interfaces, and this is the only clip-on bar setup I’ve seen that lets you adjust the angle at which the phone faces you.

The 76 Projects mount is made of a much higher grade of plastic than came with my AliExpress mount (I also ordered a Garmin stick-on adapter for my phone from 76 Projects, which is similar): despite also using a Garmin mount, I haven’t had any problems with that. The problem I do have with this mount is that it it’s not rigid: either the velcro straps have a little play, or the stacks of spacers do, so the whole assembly wobbles a bit, probably exacerbated by the weight I’ve got on it. This is more of an issue for me because I have a headlight hanging from the GoPro mount on the bottom, cantilevered on a short extension, and it’s distracting to have the beam wobble up and down.

I backed a Kickstarter project from Peak Design and wound up with their out front mount. This clocks in at 101 g with the GoPro attachment. Normally I wouldn’t use an out front mount with clip-on bars: it would need to be located between a clip-on bar and the stem; this would force the bars to be moved outboard, which I don’t want to do. This one, however, comes with 7/8″ shims (which fit clip-on bars); the mounting surface works when rotated 90°; and by a stroke of luck, when mounted to my clip-on bars, this almost perfectly centers the mount: my clip-on bars are spaced 124 mm OC, and the Peak Design’s mounting surface winds up being 65 mm inboard. That 3-mm deviation from center doesn’t trigger OCD for me; for anyone who wanted to use this system on bars spaced much differently, their motorcycle bar mount puts the mounting surface on an articulated arm (somewhat like the QuadLock one), so it should be possible to center. The out front mount is pretty beefy, and the motorcycle mount is heavier still.

This mount is nicely made and well thought out, with all the major parts being aluminum. Everything feels very precise and substantial; the GoPro mount fits in place of a little conical washer and snugs up just so. The attachment mechanism is clever: magnets snap the phone to the mounting surface in exactly the right position, and two spring-loaded claws click into recesses in the phone case/adapter. It’s very satisfying and easy to clip the phone on. Two buttons on the underside of the mount retract the claws for removing the phone (only one claw really needs to be retracted). I found that the release buttons were easy to operate with thin gloves on, but might be a problem with more heavily insulated gloves.

I did find that without having the clamp really tight, the mount did rotate slightly after riding on rough roads. It would probably be a good idea to put a strip of helicopter tape on the bar to provide a little traction, especially if you’re using carbon bars that shouldn’t have too much clamping force applied.

This is the first one-sided mount I’ve really used on this bike, and once I got it set up, I realized that my clip-on bars are splayed out slightly, so in addition to being slightly off-center, my phone winds up being angled parallel to one bar. This will be easy to fix, but using a bridge design sidesteps the problem. I really like this attachment mechanism and will probably wind up tinkering to see if I can improve the connection to the bars.


None of these weights include the cases/adapters that goes on the phone, but those weights are minimal.

For a while, I have been noodling over the idea of an accessory mounting plate that would secure to the clip-on bars at four corners. All of the loads could be attached inboard of the corners rather than cantilevered, so each attachment point could be lighter—perhaps just a velcro strap and rubber bumper. Bikepacking racers frequently have a bunch of stuff on their bars—some combination of two headlights, two bike computers, a water bottle, a Spot tracker, a GoPro camera. If you could get even half of that stuff on a single plate, you’d be ahead of the game.

Wildcard Bicycle Novelties

wildcard bicycle novelties headbadge

Something reminded me of a website I visited years ago, Campy Only, where Campagnolo aficionados would congregate to rejoice in their shared disdain of Shimano. I always thought this was silly, and when I built up my Bob Jackson (more than 20 years ago now), I made sure that it had one Shimano part mixed in with what was otherwise Campy parts, just in case I ever ran across one of those guys. That website is long gone (its creator went on to start a blog, which seems to be abandoned), but I got the idea of recreating the old Campagnolo oval logo, but with “Shimano” in its place, thinking it would tweak any Campagnolo purists out there. I noodled around with that and was pleased with my results, so I kept going, reimagining some other logos.

I decided to do something with those designs, so I had them printed up as stickers, set up a Threadless shop for print-on-demand t-shirts, and set up Wildcard Bicycle Novelties as a storefront. Any profits I make before the cease-and-desist orders roll in will go to World Bicycle Relief.

Mueller-Lexington-Mueller 200K

I’ve been vaguely interested in randonneuring for a long time—after I completed my first Austin-Houston ride, I met a guy who was into it, who suggested I ought to check it out. More recently, I started lurking on the local randonneuring group’s mailing list. After my failed attempt at the TABR, I decided I needed more experience at long distances, so I finally joined RUSA. The first ride organized by the local group after that happened to be on the 100th anniversary of the first brevet organized by the sport’s governing body, Audax Club Parisien. That seemed like an auspicious beginning.

Most (all?) of the local brevets start and finish at a convenience store that’s barely a mile from my home, which is convenient for me. Yesterday’s ride had 16 people sign up, which I understand to be a good showing.

I had laid out my stuff the night before, aired up my tires, etc, so I’d have a minimum of things to do in the morning. Got up at 5:00, ate breakfast, got suited and booted, and was out the door by 5:20.

We were all at the start with time to spare. Jeff, the ride organizer, gave some preliminary instructions. It seemed as if everyone else knew each other—I was clearly the only first-timer, and there were quite a few PBP veterans. Jeff pointed out a couple of guys to me and told me they’re fast—that he knows I’m fast, but I shouldn’t feel like I need to hang with them. I told him I was planning on riding my own ride.

We were rolling on time 6:00 AM. We agreed to ride together for the first 20 or so miles, at which point we’d stop at a picturesquely decrepit old store for a group photo, and then ride at our own pace.

This and the neutralized start at TABR are the only times I’ve ridden in a group in many years; this was the first time I’ve ridden in the dark in a bunch perhaps ever. Our route out of town was mostly new to me—occasionally we were on streets that I’d ridden before, but for the most part we weren’t. The dark, the new streets, and the riding in a pack all made the first hour or so a new experience.

After the photo op in Cele, we got back onto the road in small clots of a few riders each. I was in the first group back on the road, and after just a mile or two, I wanted to get moving. Partly this was to warm up. Partly this was to make good time before the day got hot. Partly because I’m out of the habit of riding in a group and was ready to ride on my own. And partly this was because, although brevets are not races, I do know the riders pay attention to times, and as the new guy, I wanted to lay down a marker. So I shot off the front.

At this point, I was mostly on roads that I’ve ridden before. I hunkered down on my aerobars and jammed. Despite having had a cold for the past few days, I felt good.

At mile 40, one of the two guys Jeff had pointed out to me as being fast rolled past me like I was going backwards. We said “hey” to each other and he was gone. I forgot his name. Very tall, very thin, weird setup with bars set super-high using what I think is a Bike Friday stem. In any case, I didn’t see him again.

Made it to Taylor and kept going. The route after that was mostly roads that are new to me. I had my bone-conduction headset on, reading me directions and playing DJ sets that I’ve downloaded to my phone.

The country between Taylor and Lexington is pretty flat, agricultural, not a lot of trees, and a lot of the fields had been harvested recently, so were bare dirt. I was mostly just in the zone, focused on my riding.

Made it to Lexington, where the ride turns around, at about 9:30. I think there’s a restaurant in Lexington where I could have gotten solid food, but I didn’t look for one and the only one I knew of—Subway—was closed at that hour. Stopped for a big Snickers bar and a bottle of Gatorade (I’d eaten a couple of Clif bars up to that point). As I was rolling out of the parking lot, another one of the brevet riders—on a heavy-looking Soma with flared gravel bars—rolled in. We said “hey” and I kept on going.

There’s a spot just outside Lexington where the road is under construction and narrowed down to one lane; instead of flaggers, there are stoplights controlling traffic. When I rolled through this on the return leg, I saw most of the other riders were waiting to get through on the other side. And a bit further on down from them, I saw the one guy participating on a recumbent trike.

Made it back to Taylor, thought about stopping for tacos, didn’t. Kept going. Had an energy bar when I got just past town, in the shadow of a privately operated prison.

When I got back to that old store in Cele, I saw there was a couple of cyclists there hanging out. Initially I thought they might be part of our group, and was puzzled that they would have gotten past me. It turns out they weren’t, and we had a nice chat. It seems that the Cele store is only open weekends, and has good barbecue. Which was tempting, but I still had 20 miles to go and didn’t indulge. My legs had been threatening to cramp up a little before this, and stopping for a bit seemed to hit the reset switch on that, but I didn’t want to linger for too long.

Most of the remainder of the ride was on the new-to-me roads we had rolled out on, but now I could see them and place them in context. They avoided some unpleasant roads that I’ve ridden on many times just out of habit—I’ll need to add them to my repertoire. I made it back to the starting point without incident, and then back home.

Early in the ride, I thought that I might be able to hold my average moving speed at 18 mph for the ride. I have the RwGPS app report my stats every 15 minutes, and I had a few 15-minute periods where I was rolling at 19.9 mph, which is great, and was keeping my average at 18 mph for pretty much the first half, but it slipped slightly on the return, and over the last 10 miles, it slipped considerably. My rolling average wound up being 17.7 mph—I’m still quite content with that, and this was by far the fastest 200K that I have the receipts for. I didn’t eat enough (4 Clif bars, 1 Snickers bar) and maybe didn’t hydrate enough during the ride. Writing this the next day, after a big post-ride snack, a big dinner, and solid night’s sleep, I’m still a bit tired.

The weather wound up being perfect. A little on the cool side to start. The day did warm up, but wasn’t brutally hot. The wind was that rarest of things, still for the outbound leg and a slight tailwind on the return.

Bike gear capsule reviews

I bought a lot of bike stuff preparatory to riding the TABR. Here are my comments on some of it.

Parts

Redshift Shockstop seatpost

  • I’ve got mine set fairly firm. I rarely notice any bobbing except on smooth roads when I’m really grinding at low RPM.
  • Can’t compensate for big hits, but does take the edge off a lot of bad pavement. I notice the difference most on textured pavement, which it really smooths out.
  • As much as my ass hurt in the race (a lot), I cannot imagine how much more it would have hurt without a suspension seatpost.
  • Cane Creek makes an elastomer-based suspension seatpost that I’d be interested in comparing with this.

Redshift Shockstop stem

The effect this has is more subtle than the seatpost. It’s a little weird watching the handlebars move up and down relative to the bike, but it doesn’t seem to affect handling.

Just Riding Along Mahi Mahi wheels

Good price, seem reasonably fast, good customization options (they offer dyno hubs, which was key for me). These are the only wheels I’ve ever had with deep-section carbon rims, so I don’t have any basis for comparison. Didn’t give me any trouble.

Dyno hubs are expensive, but they make a lot of sense for an event like the TABR.

Speedplay Zero pedals

I used Bebop pedals for a very long time. I still would, if they were still in production. These are the nearest equivalents. I’m not thrilled with how fussy they are to set up and maintain, or the fact that they use a unique drilling pattern, but they do give numerous degrees of adjustment and wide ranges of adjustability. In short, I am able to ride comfortably in them, which is what’s important.

The first day of TABR 2021 had very foul weather, which is kryptonite for Speedplays. My right cleat became extremely difficult to disengage. By the time I scratched, the left bearings had almost completely seized up. Both cleats became difficult to engage. Speedplay recommended re-greasing every 2000 miles under ideal conditions—which did not prevail—and I didn’t bring a grease gun. A lot of riders bring spare cleats on the TABR, but the problem with Speedplays is the cleats are left/right-specific, so you need to bring two spares to cover your bases. I brought none.

Now that Wahoo has redesigned them (after I bought mine), they claim that re-greasing is no longer needed. Not sure how effective the new seals are. And they don’t need a 3-hole/4-hole adapter plate or special 4-hole shoes anymore, which is nice.

But my take-away is that if you can ride comfortably in SPDs, those are better for an event like the TABR. Shimano’s pedals are solid, the cleats are robust and spares are easy to carry, and riding in walkable shoes is an advantage.

Bags

I had a total of ~27 liters of storage capacity between four bags on my bike. My logic in packing was to make sure that stuff I would need frequently would be easy to get at, and stuff I might need could be shoved away in a less accessible place.

I think years of going to burn events has produced in me a tendency to over-prepare. I think of this in terms of percentages—do you want to be prepared for 90% of situations you might encounter? 95%? 99%? Each step up the preparation scale requires more stuff, sometimes a lot more. So I was carrying spare spokes and a fiberfix spoke for field-expedient repairs. I was carrying a spare derailleur hanger, a bit of extra chain and a master link, a spare derailleur cable, and random nuts and bolts just in case. I was carrying enough clothes to deal with freezing weather.

The Tailfin had by far the most volume, and if there’s a problem with it, it’s not with its workmanship or design, it’s a philosophical problem: it has 20 liters of capacity, which is a lot for a bikepacking race, so it doesn’t force you to edit your gear list as severely as you might otherwise. That said, there’s very little of what I packed that I would have left behind even with the benefit of hindsight, and one or two things that I probably should have brought that I didn’t.

Tailfin Aeropack X

  • Beautiful construction, meticulously considered design.
  • Rock solid. Doesn’t noticeably affect handling except for the sail effect in strong crosswinds. It really feels like a part of the bike.
  • Unless you’ve got a lot of seatpost showing, get the “extended seatpost connector” so that the bag can open clear of your saddle.
  • When transferring the seatpost clamp to the extended connector, be careful with the screw post that mounts it, as it is easy to round out the hex-key opening. Ideally this would have a torx head or a steel screw post.
  • The rubber bushings that fit in the “fast release” mounts are not retained well. I’ve now seen that Tailfin recommends gluing them in place with some CA glue. Even with that, the smart thing is to keep the mounts shut at all times, whether on or off the bike.
  • In addition to its main opening on top, it has a zipped side opening and a small zipped stash pocked on the other side. I’m not sure either of these do much good.
  • Really expensive.

I kept my minimal sleep setup, extra clothes (in stuff sacks), and spare parts in this bag. It doesn’t sound like much, but the bag was pretty full.

Apidura Racing Frame Bag (4 L)

I got this at the last minute when I decided that my Tailfin bag was going to be overstuffed.

It has a main compartment accessed from the right, and a flat stash pocket on the left. I kept my printed cheatsheets on the left (never actually used them–I also had the cheatsheets on my phone as an e-book); on the right I had my first-aid supplies, toiletries, second pair of gloves, and probably a few other things.

The only criticisms I can make against it are that when my legs were covered with road grit on Day 1 and they would sometimes rub against the bag, my skin got really torn up. Also, this bag and the top-tube bag especially are hard on the frame’s paint job. I should have had a layer of helicopter tape on the frame at the contact points.

Apidura Racing Long Top Tube Bag

My intention was to keep stuff that I knew I would need frequently in this bag. In practice, it wasn’t quite big enough for all that. It has a divider across the middle, and two-way zipper, so you have a little bit of compartmentalization with it. It has a shielded pass-through in the front, and that’s where my USB converter and power bank lived. I also kept my pump, chain lube, Dynaplug, and multi-tool in here.

On the advice of a fitter, I got my frame one size larger than I normally would, to get the added stack height. Between that and this bag, I could barely clear the top tube when standing over the bike. This wasn’t a big problem, but it wasn’t ideal.

When I was running a cable from the USB converter (in the bag) to my phone (out of the bag), a little rainwater did intrude because the zipper wasn’t fully zipped, but I can’t criticize the bag for that.

Kaibab Customs custom-made bag

This was a small bag that slung under the aerobars and mostly carried snacks; my satellite tracker was also held in place by the velcro straps that attached the bag to the aerobars, which gave it good exposure to the satellites it communicates with.

In hindsight, it would have been better to have this bag made with a cable pass-through in the back so that my USB converter and power bank could live inside it–the disposition of my gear would have been a little tidier that way.

Camelbak Classic

I know Camelbaks are not popular among roadies, but during the pandemic, I wanted to be able to carry a lot of water so I wouldn’t need to stop, and they excel at that. I found that I prefer using a Camelbak in some ways. This has a tiny pocket on the back. I was riding tubeless tires, and used this to carry a couple of just-in-case innertubes, tire levers, and patches.

Drawbacks:

  • I haven’t found a good way to secure the end of the hose. I wind up tucking it under the shoulder strap. Camelbak makes a magnetic retainer that hooks onto the shoulder strap, but the way it hooks on is so insecure that it’s not usable.
  • The mesh surface facing my back tears up my jerseys.
  • A lot of people complain about getting a sweaty back with a Camelbak. No argument there. I think this is a bigger problem in cold weather than hot, though. I can deal with the heat. But in cold weather the ability to evaporate sweat is an important aspect of your ability to stay warm and comfortable; with a hydration pack on, I find that the part of my back directly under the pack is sweaty and well-insulated, so it stays warm; there’s a ring on my back around the pack that is sweaty but not insulated, and this gets clammy or downright cold, regardless of how I’m dressed. In practice, this did not wind up being a showstopper, but it did contribute a little bit to discomfort, especially on long descents in cold weather.

Electronics

kLite Ultra-low drag road kit

This consists of a headlight, USB converter, and pre-assembled wiring harness with a switch, designed to work specifically with the SON Delux hub (which is what my front wheel has). Everything worked without giving me any trouble. The connectors and wires are all very robust, and although I would have been willing to solder up my own wiring harness, I’m pretty sure the prefabricated one is better than anything I would produce, which is reassuring.

The illumination was more than adequate for my needs. I didn’t do a huge amount of night riding in TABR 2021, and didn’t do any high-speed descents. The light head has three emitters, the third of which only comes on at higher speeds (about 18 mph, I think). It would be cool if this third one was targeted farther ahead than the other two; cooler still if the light used shaped reflectors like a B&M light to more effectively target the light on the road. It does include a standlight, and I was impressed at how long that runs for—I saw a little bit of residual light even an hour after stopping.

The USB converter does what it needs to do, and is always on. kLite 3D prints a bunch of its ancillary parts, including the housing for the USB converter, so it is chunkier and heavier than it needs to be, but overall, this doesn’t make a big difference. I do wish kLite outsourced production of those ancillary parts to someone who could fabricate them from aluminum.

The switch controls whether all the dyno output is sent to the USB converter, or is sent preferentially to the headlight, with any excess power going to the converter. Below about 6 mph, it seems, neither one receives power. This could be a problem for mountain climbs at night.

There weren’t as many racers using dynamo-powered lights as I expected. I noticed a few racers with doubled-up battery lights. I did have a Lezyne battery light as a backup myself. It throws enough light and has decent runtime, but the big drawback with it is its charging time. Looking at the nearest current model, it supposedly offers about 4 hours runtime and 4.5 hours charge time (if using a 2-amp USB source). Four hours of runtime is probably OK for a midpack rider. 4.5 hours charge time would also be OK for a midpack rider who’s staying in hotels, but this is faster than I’m actually seeing charging my own light. I think that charging time is the real limiting factor ultra riders will run into with battery lights.

Aftershokz Aeropex bone-conduction headset

I refuse to close off my ears when I’m on the bike. I know some ear buds, like AirPods Pro, can feed through ambient sound, which might be a reasonable option, but I decided to go with these.

The audio experience with these is almost exactly like having a small speaker hovering near each ear. They can drown out quiet sounds, but other than that, you hear everything around you; they can also be drowned out by loud sounds, such as wind noise. The physical experience is almost nonexistent—I barely notice I have them on. If I turn up the volume loud enough, I can feel a little vibration at my temples. They’re more comfortable to wear for extended periods than my earbuds. Sound quality isn’t bad, but won’t win any awards.

It seems that every wearable Bluetooth audio-playback device has its own set of control gestures, which is annoying. The gestures this uses aren’t bad, but if you use more than one system (I do), it is hard to keep track.

There were a few other riders in TABR 2021 using these, and overall, I think they’re a great benefit if you’re using the spoken turn-by-turn directions in the Ride with GPS app (I was). I didn’t spend a lot of time listening to music, but it was nice to have the option. I did miss a couple of turns when I had the headset turned off or there was a lot of ambient noise, but I resolved those mistakes quickly. On balance, I’m pretty sure they helped me stay on track better than I would have without them.

iPhone

Finding a good mount has been a challenge. I have used a couple of third-party Garmin handlebar mounts and slapped an adhesive Garmin “knuckle” on the back of an iPhone case. The problem I had, repeatedly, is that the tabs in the Garmin insert in the mount—the part that retains the knuckle—would get shredded on bumpy roads. This may be chintzy plastic, or it may simply be that the iPhone exerts too much torque on the insert. Interestingly, the knuckle never showed any signs of wear. I’m currently using a Quadlock mount, which works well. To be precise, I’m using part of a Quadlock mount intended for motorcycles, and bolting that on to an aerobar bridge that I found on Ali Express. That bridge came with useless P-clamps (although the bridge itself is quite sturdy), and I had some custom clamps fabricated to fit on the aerobars.

Battery life is sometimes cited as a concern when using a smartphone instead of a proper bike computer. I do agree that battery life will be shorter, but it’s not as bad as one might think. For one thing, I keep the screen off most of the time and rely on audible updates—Ride with GPS reads me cues (when I’m following a planned route), and also have it read my stats at regular intervals. On a recent ride where I was out for 7 hours, I had 50% left in the tank when I got home, and this was also playing back a mix of streaming and locally stored music over my aforementioned Aftershokz headset for more than half the ride. I do a couple of things to extend the battery life: turn off wifi and put the phone in low-power mode (which clocks down the processor, but is almost unnoticeable). On the TABR—or anytime you’re riding out of cellular coverage—it makes sense to put the phone in airplane mode. This requires you to have stored the route on the phone, rather than relying on the cloud version of it (RwGPS defaults to the latter).

Using a dyno/USB converter or external power bank, it is in theory possible to keep the phone topped off all the time—except when it’s raining. Modern iPhones are water-resistant, but part of that water resistance depends on detecting water in the Lightning port and disabling it. I found during heavy rain that it would not charge, although once it had a chance to dry out, it would. This could get to be a problem in a multi-day event if the rain persists and you have minimal rest periods when you can charge it off-bike, but that’s true for any battery-powered gadget.

Clothes

Castelli Nano Flex Pro Race Bib Short

  • Brilliant. Super comfortable. They basically disappear.
  • I was concerned that the lack of leg grippers would let the hems ride up, but that hasn’t been a problem.
  • Hem seems to be cut lower in front than in back, which is a little weird.

Galibier Tempest jacket

Rain jacket that also provided some additional warmth and windproofing. Packs down to fit in a back pocket: in addition to wearing this in the rain, I would put this on before a long descent following a long climb.

There are other rain jackets that are lighter and fancier, but they’re also much more expensive. This was a good deal.

Jerseys

I’ve given up on short-sleeved jerseys. Riding in Texas, you might think you’d want as little coverage as possible, but I’ve found that a lightweight long-sleeved jersey isn’t really hotter and gives me some sun protection. Such jerseys aren’t exactly common–I’ve found several companies making them, and have tried three.

Stolen Goat Topper Bodyline Jersey

Fits well. I like the raw-cut sleeve edges. Would be nice if it had grippers in the hem, but it seems to sit about right on me even without them. Has a side-zipped security pocket that I don’t really use, but seems like a nice idea. This would be my go-to jersey.

Pactimo Ascent Aero jersey

I’ve got a slightly outdated version of this that I got on closeout. I like the fit. Not thrilled about the abbreviated collar. Don’t like the pockets, which have very high openings that are hard to get into.

Gloves

Gore-tex C3 Infinium gloves

These did a good job of keeping my hands warm on pretty chilly days, even on long descents, when the windchill would have been severe. They’re very close fitting all around, which for the most part is good, but they’re very difficult to take off when wet. Generally comfortable to wear and offered good dexterity for things like typing on my phone, although adding a conductive pad to the middle finger would have been nice.

They have minimal padding, and what padding there is may not be optimally placed. I wound up with very slight nerve pain in the “valley” of the palm (which I have learned is called the thenar) from riding on the ramps. Not surprising after riding 550 miles in 3½ days—not sure if I can blame that on the gloves.

Also, one of the gloves started coming unstitched along one seam after less than 1000 miles of use, though as luck would have it, this was on the day that I scratched. If the durability were better, these gloves would be ideal.

I got these in high-vis yellow, and they are shockingly bright.

Specialized Grail

No complaints. They just work. Minimal padding seems to do its job. When new, there were tiny elastic bands along the outsides of the wrists that quickly fell off, but I haven’t noticed any change in fit or comfort as a result.

Northwave Extreme GT 2 shoes

  • Very nice construction.
  • Use Northwave’s Boa-like closures, which are slightly less convenient than real Boas (getting out of the shoe is a two-handed process). The dials got hard to loosen after Day 1 of TABR 2021, during which they got liberally spattered with rain and road grit.
  • The openings dig in a little bit around the inside of my ankles. So far this has been no worse than slightly annoying. Put pads in that seem to help a bit.
  • I would get hotfoot on training rides after about 70 miles in these. They do come with a pretty good footbed with a metatarsal bump; I’ve tried aftermarket footbeds, which maybe help a little, but what really helps is moving my cleats rearward. I also found during the TABR that simply leaving the closures looser, perhaps coupled with the fact that I wasn’t riding as hard, eliminated hotfoot.

TABR training notes

I mentally committed to riding TABR 2021 at the end of January 2020, and started training in earnest in March. I didn’t know what I was doing at first—I was still figuring out structured training, but by June, I had the rudiments of a training plan. I’ve been refining and tinkering with it since then.

That should have been plenty of time for me to get in shape for the TABR, but now I am 11 weeks away, and I feel like it wasn’t.

I can attribute part of this to some health issues (some related to my training, some not) that started cropping up in October and weren’t resolved until February. My fitness didn’t deteriorate during that time, but it didn’t improve either.

But part of it is simply being too complacent with my training plan. I could have pushed myself harder during the four months October—February. And I definitely could have started pushing myself harder immediately after that.

I saw a comment from a coach who has worked with at least a couple of successful TABR racers that one should get one’s cumulative training load up to 120 before the race. I don’t see a good way for me to do that right now.

There are a few concepts to understand here:

  • Every workout has a training stress score (TSS) calculated for it. This is a single number that represents both the intensity and duration of the workout. The formula for working it out is complicated.
  • Cumulative training load (CTL) is a rolling average of the training stress scores for one’s workouts over the previous six weeks. This is also sometimes called “fitness.”
  • Acute training load (ATL) is a rolling average of the training stress scores for one’s workouts over the previous week. This is also sometimes called “fatigue.”
  • Training stress balance (TSB) is CTL minus ATL. This is also sometimes called “form.” In order to be making progress, this needs to be a negative number, but if it is beyond -30, that indicates overtraining. This also lets one optimize one’s taper for a race: by easing off training immediately before a race, CTL goes down but TSB goes up. However, I’m not sure how applicable TSB is to a multi-day event like the TABR.

In any case, there’s no way for me to ramp up from where I’m at right now (CTL of 82 as of this writing) to a CTL of 120 without my TSB going deeply negative. In fact, there’s no way for me to ramp up my mileage to where I want it without spending some time in the TSB red zone.

My current training plan has me doing two 60(ish)-minute interval workouts, two 90-minute recovery rides, and a long weekend ride each week; I am using a mesocycle of three weeks, where I ramp up my long-ride distance by 10% for each cycle, and in the third week of each cycle, give myself an easy week with a relatively short weekend ride.

In order to build this plan, I’ve had to estimate the TSS for all my workouts. For the weekday workouts, this is a non-issue. I build the workout in Training Peaks and then I ride it on my stationary bike, so apart from the smart trainer having minor tracking issues, the result is nearly identical to the plan. There are no confounding factors like hills or weather. For the weekend road rides, I alternate hilly rides with flat rides; I worked out an average TSS/mile for both categories based on past rides, and use that when estimating the TSS of upcoming rides. I don’t have a power meter on my bike, so TSS for past rides is calculated based on heart rate (which I know is less accurate).

For my most recent weekend ride, this didn’t work. I had estimated a TSS of 355. Due to steep hills and strong headwinds, it turned out to be 465. It’s three days later and I barely feel recovered from it.

My current plan gets me up to a CTL of 105 before the event, and that is after a recent retooling to give me a more aggressive ramp rate. But now I’m wondering if even that is too aggressive. Especially since I’ll intentionally be hitting TSSs of 465 on some of my weekend rides as I ramp up, and I know how much that took out of me. I am worried that I’ll be both overtrained in terms of my health and undertrained for the event.

With my current training plan, I am cramming most of my TSS ramp-up into my weekend ride. In theory, I could change my training plan so that instead of comparatively light weekday rides and a very heavy weekend ride, I would ride at more consistent TSS levels throughout the week. This would avoid blowing myself out on one weekend ride, but would be harder to fit into weekdays, and in any case, I feel like I need to have the experience of long, uninterrupted hours in the saddle to prepare.

Take to the Sky


This is my new bike.

The setup

Frame
Kinesis RTD. This is a 55.5 cm frame, bigger than the 54 cm I would usually ride, which I chose at the suggestion of a fitter, who was concerned I wouldn’t be able to get enough stack on the smaller size. As I’ve got it set up now, I could probably lower the stem and still be comfortable.
Wheels
Just Riding Along “Mahi Mahi” rims (30 mm front/50 mm rear), SON Deluxe front hub, JRA house-brand rear hubs, Sapim X-ray bladed spokes. I felt like this would give me the best balance of aerodynamics and handling in crosswinds.
Group
mostly Dura Ace.
Cranks
Easton EA90. (Bottom bracket is also from Easton.) I got over my pride and decided to use 46/30 chainrings. For the amount of power that I can produce and my style of riding, I don’t need anything bigger (I sometimes see cyclists in bike forums asking about putting bigger chainrings on their bikes and I wonder “can you really push that gear?”). There aren’t a lot of road cranks that will take rings in those sizes (Shimano’s GRX have a wider chainline, which I could imagine causing shifting problems), which is why I went with Easton cranks. Although I don’t have a power meter on this bike now, Easton’s spindle-based power meter would be a relatively easy retrofit.
Cassette
Ultegra 11-30. Having small chainrings meant that I could put a relatively close-spaced cassette in back. This still gives a very low low gear, and a top gear that’s higher than the 52×13 that was typical when I started cycling. If I feel like I can pull it off, I’ll use an 11-28 instead.
Seatpost
Redshift; can toggle between a conventional position and a TT position on the fly. I got this used, along with a set of Redshift aero bars. After only one ride, I’m not convinced that it suits my purposes, but it is a well-made piece of equipment.
Saddle
Fabric Race Line Shallow, which seems to work for me.
Stem
Old stock from Zipp. Available cheaply; bought as a placeholder to confirm my positioning; I will probably replace it with a shock-absorbing stem from Redshift
Bars
Old stock from 3T, also available cheaply.
Pedals
Speedplays zeros. I would like to use SPDs, but they don’t offer a lot of float, and that has been causing me knee trouble lately, so at the last minute I made this change.
Tires
Continental GP5000 tubeless, 28 mm. I waffled on whether to go tubeless on this rig and ultimately decided that I would. I’d read horror stories about how hard road tubeless tires can be to mount and inflate, and about how tires that are the tiniest bit out of spec with the rims can blow off. In this case, I was able to mount the tires by hand with little trouble, and even inflate them with just my track pump, no air blaster required. Getting the valves set up took a little trial and error, and I misjudged the ideal length for the stems.
Chain
Wipperman Connex. Has a reputation for being especially durable, and the master link uses a clever design that does not require a tool to connect or disconnect.

Build notes

This is the first bike I assembled entirely myself. I had a shop face the brake mounts and bottom-bracket shell, and I bought prebuilt wheels, but the rest I did on my own.

The number of weird, specific bits and pieces I needed came as a surprise. I wound up getting a special socket driver for the bottom bracket and another one for the lockring that holds the chainrings to the cranks. I had bought the levers and brake calipers used, and had to buy barbed fittings and “olives” for the hoses (as it turns out, I should have bought new hoses as well). The rear caliper requires mounting bolts that are sized exactly to the frame, so I had to get those as well, and Shimano’s documentation on this is somewhat lacking, so that took a fair amount of research.

Apart from needing two new tools, getting the bottom bracket and cranks set up was a breeze. Although the preload adjuster didn’t stay locked in place.

Cutting the steerer tube was nerve-racking–do it wrong, and the fork is a total loss. Bleeding the brakes was especially nerve-racking. I’ve tried it before and gotten it wrong. I may still need to re-bleed the rear brake, because the bite-point seems a little late, but they both work.

Routing the cables and hoses was surprisingly fussy and involved a fair amount of trial and error. Although the result is OK, cosmetically it could be better. The frame routes the cables and rear-brake hose through the inside of the downtube, which was a slow and fussy task. I’m guessing that a Di2 setup would be considerably more fussy.

Using Shimano’s documentation to get the derailleurs set up was an exercise in frustration, and I really didn’t feel like I had it right until I took the bike around the block a few times and played with the barrel adjuster. I wound up ignoring Shimano’s documentation on bleeding brakes and went with Park Tools’ instead. As a Japanese translator and technical writer, I’m kind of disappointed with Shimano’s documentation–both the translation and the overall approach.

Ride notes

So far I’ve only gone on a couple of neighborhood shakedown rides and one real ride. I’m still getting my position dialed in.

On my one full-length ride I had the tires over-inflated and wound up letting some air out at the turnaround point; I could probably still let more air out. The frame is reputed to be especially smooth-riding, but I was feeling slightly beat up. I may change the seatpost for one with a little give (something my Felt VR30 has), or perhaps a suspended seatpost. I was buffeted by a stiff crosswind the whole way, which was a good test for those aero wheels (these the first aero wheels I’ve had). They definitely took a little extra wrangling, but not more than I expected. My average speed for the ride wound up being about 1 mph faster than I would have expected on the Felt I’ve mostly been riding lately.

Bad rides

Ride Time: 4:53:17
Stopped Time: 27:16
Distance: 75.08 miles
Average: 15.36 mph

I went for a ride yesterday that I can only describe as a bad ride. It was cold and rainy. When I rolled out, I thought I’d be warm enough. I wasn’t. My left knee starting bothering me after about 20 miles. I had planned on riding 85 miles, but got discouraged and turned around early, so I only put in 75.

But you don’t learn anything from a ride that goes perfectly. When things go wrong, you can learn a lot. So what did I learn?

Because my right leg was doing most of the work, I couldn’t ride as hard, so I couldn’t generate as much body heat as usual, so my kit—which might have been warm enough if I were riding harder—wasn’t warm enough. Normally my average heart rate on a ride like this would end up around 125 bpm, and be higher at the end than the beginning; on this ride it was around 123 bpm early in the ride, and by the time the ride ended, it was down to 119 bpm. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have been warm enough anyhow: I’ve worn exactly the same kit to commute to work in the same conditions, but my commute is only about 30 minutes each way, not a continuous five-hour slog. I’m not sure whether to chalk up the difference to riding faster on the commute, or just an ability to tough out the cold for a short period.

I suspect my knee was jacked up because of a combination of the cold tightening my muscles, and my pedals not giving me as much float as I’d like. My natural tendency is to ride in a very toes-out stance. I always used to ride on Bebop pedals, which had 20° free float. Conceptually, they’re a lot like Speedplay pedals, except they are more robust and the cleats fit regular 2-bolt drilling.

Bebop pedals were produced by what I think was a one-man company. Eventually he sold the works to a big Taiwanese company that continued manufacturing them for a few years, but ceased production in 2017. I’ve still got a set, but the cleats are worn out. I’ve got a watchlist set on eBay for these: in four months, I’ve seen two NOS sets listed; in both cases for ridiculous prices, and in both cases they’re snatched up immediately. If there were a Kickstarter to put them back into production, I’d subscribe.

Rather than switching to Speedplay pedals, I’ve been using SPDs. But SPDs only have 4–5° float, and I can’t position them to accommodate my weird stance on the bike. In the warm months, this hasn’t been a problem, but my past two chilly rides have been hard on my left knee, and I’m pretty sure this is why.

So what I’ve learned is that I’ve got to bite the bullet, get warmer cold-weather gear, and get pedals with more float.

Diving into structured training

I started getting interested in bikes when I was 13. My interest has waxed and waned over the years, but never really went away. I’ve thought of myself as a cyclist since I got my first pair of cleats at 17. I’ve always been interested in bikes as objects of technology and craftsmanship, and I’ve always enjoyed riding them. At various points I’ve gotten to be a pretty strong rider, but I’ve never been methodical about it—beyond following Eddy Merckx’s advice to ride lots, and perhaps alternating long days with short days, I’ve never been interested in structured training. Lately I have gotten interested, and like so many things, once you pry the lid open on a subject, you discover it goes much deeper than you ever imagined.

I’ve been trying to digest a lot of the concepts involved in structured training, but I haven’t found any one place that packages them up so far. There is a book (and a paper that preceded it) that, well, “wrote the book” on a lot of this, and I may eventually break down and get it. For now, this is my own cheatsheet. Some of this may be wrong. I’m not going to link back to citations for everything. Caveat lector.


Watt
The unit of measure for power. Training these days is structured around power and heart rate. In the past, cyclists would ride to time, or to distance, or to speed.
Kilojoule
The unit of measure for total work performed during a workout. Note that watts are a measure of instantaneous power, but kilojoules are a measure of work over time (same as watt-hours: there are 3600 joules in 1 watt-hour). Thanks to a statistical fluke, the work performed in kilojoules is treated as equal to the calories burned during a workout. So you burn 1000 kCal in a 1000 kJ workout.
Functional threshold power (FTP)
The maximum average effort a cyclist can put out for one hour, measured in watts. The gold standard for this is to ride an hour all-out. Most people don’t do this because it’s awful—instead, most people ride a 20-minute FTP test and deduct a certain percentage from that result—typically 5%, but if you’re not exceptionally fit, it should be 10% or 15%. Even riding 20 minutes on the road is difficult just for logistical reasons—you’d want 7 or more miles of level road with no stops, or a hill climb that’s a few miles long, again without stops—so I suspect most people do FTP tests on stationary bikes. FTP is a training tool: it’s used as a baseline for other workouts. All my interval patterns are based on percentages of FTP. It’s also good for bragging rights (unless your FTP is as low as mine, in which case you prefer not to talk about it). I’ve seen articles on how to maximize your FTP test results, but this seems wrong-headed if you’re using it as a training tool, since all the training you base on it will be off. The most celebrated record in cycling is the hour record, which is pretty much what it sounds like: how far you can go in an hour (on a track bike, in a velodrome). The current men’s record for this is about 55 km, and it’s estimated that riders are putting out about 440 watts at that level (which sounds less impressive when you realize it’s about 3/5 horsepower—less than a chainsaw engine puts out).
W/kg
Your power-to-weight ratio. Usually refers to Your FTP divided by your weight, but may be used to describe the power you can maintain over shorter periods. A small, strong rider will have a better power-to-weight ratio than a big rider who’s not so strong, but the big rider may have a higher absolute wattage output. These numbers can be important in different contexts: riding fast over level ground is mostly a matter of raw power because once you get past about 16 mph, almost all the drag you encounter is aerodynamic drag, and that increases with the square of your speed. But riding fast up a hill is more about W/kg, because you’re going slower in the first place (so aerodynamics are less important) and gravitational drag becomes a big part of the total resistance you encounter.
Critical power
The maximum power that can be maintained indefinitely, in watts. You can put out higher power, but only for a limited period of time, and there’s an asymptotic curve plotting the relationship between power output and duration, so you can put out very high power for a few seconds, fairly high power for a few minutes, and critical power for hours. Going beyond CP means relying to some extent on anaerobic capacity.
W’ (w prime)
The capacity for work above critical power, in kilojoules. You can put out effort in the W’ range for 10–15 minutes. The problem with going into the W’ range is that it costs a lot of energy, and once you’re done, you’re very depleted.
Normalized power
This is a weighted average power for a workout. Because all the time you spend above critical power tends to burn you out more quickly, a workout in which your effort fluctuates between high and low levels will be harder than a steady-state workout at the same average power. Normalized power reflects that.
Intensity
Normalized power divided by FTP.
Training Stress Score (TSS)
This is way of expressing a workout’s duration and intensity. Riding for one hour at FTP will have a TSS of 100. This is used to set weekly training goals, so for example you’ll aim for your all your workouts in a week to add up to a TSS of, say, 350.
Chronic training load (CTL)
Average TSS over 42 days.
Acute training load (ATL)
Average TSS over 7 days.
Training stress balance (TSB)
CTL minus ATL. I’ve also seen this referred to as “form.” The idea is that you want to be fresh for big events, so you taper off your training in the days beforehand. This metric is used to optimize your tapering.
Heartrate (HR)
Everyone has a maximum heartrate that’s estimated based on age, and heart-rate zones are all calculated based on your max HR. I’ve seen 220 minus age (for men) and 226 minus age (for women) as the most common way to compute this. Going by this, my max HR is 166 (as of this writing). I’ve also seen 208-(0.7 × age), which for me winds up being a few bpm higher (the results from these two equations match for men when they’re 40, for women when they’re 60). I’ve pushed myself to 165 bpm during workouts and held it steady there for a minute or two, so I’ll call these formulas close enough for me. Resting heart rate can improve dramatically with exercise. Four-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain was reputed to have a RHR of 26 bpm in his prime.
Zone
Can refer to heart-rate zones or power zones. Anyone who has used a fitbit with heart-rate monitoring has seen the yellow/orange/red zones. And it’s my understanding that the theory behind Orange Theory fitness boutiques is that they keep you in the orange zone. It turns out there are numerous different zone systems, with different numbers of zones and different breakpoints between them, and if you keep track of your data with more than one app/service, keeping their zones in alignment is a chore. Zones are another training tool, where you aim to keep your heart rate or power in a certain zone for a certain period of time during your workout.
Lactate threshold
A limit on sustained effort. Any effort beyond LT will basically be a sprint that can only be sustained for about 2½ minutes. This is really interesting to me. When I was younger, we thought of lactic acid as the waste product of exercise, and that lactic-acid accumulation occurred because your body was working too hard to clear it. Now we understand that lactate is part of the energy-transport system (also, we talk about lactate now, not lactic acid), and LT occurs because your body is producing it faster than it can process it. The body needs to deliver oxygen to the muscles in order to clear the lactate from them. We used to talk about the “anaerobic threshold,” that is, a level of intensity where you couldn’t get enough oxygen to your muscles to prevent lactic-acid accumulation, and to some extent, we still do, but nowadays we mostly talk about the lactate threshold to refer to the same idea. I get the impression this is because what we’re describing is the actual measured blood-lactate concentration. Apparently there are numerous ways to define LT, although the one I’ve seen used the most is where the lactate concentration is 4 mmol/l. This is also sometimes called LT2, to distinguish it from LT1, which is the point at which your body starts accummulating lactate faster than it can clear it (“onset of blood lactate accumulation” or OBLA). The effort in watts where LT1 and LT2 are reached can be measured, and obviously, the higher the wattage the better.
VO2max
The amount of oxygen you can breathe in per minute, in units of ml/min (sometimes expressed relative to body weight, ml/min/kg). The gold standard for testing this is to exercise to exhaustion while wearing a mask that measures the volume of air you breathe, but it can be approximated based on max and resting HR, or heart rate after specified exercises. There’s obviously a relationship between VO2max and LT, and LT is generally estimated to occur at 50–60% VO2max for untrained athletes, and 70–80% for highly trained athletes.
Intervals
A workout where you alternate periods of high intensity with low intensity.
HIIT
High-intensity interval training. A style of intervals where you ride close to VO2max with relatively long “on” intervals.
Sprint intervals
A style of intervals where you ride beyond VO2max with short “on” intervals.
Polarized training
An approach to training based on long periods at low intensity and short periods at very high intensity. The balance can be in the range 85/15 to 95/5. The idea is that you spend all your time in Zones 1/2 or 5, and none in Zones 3/4 (assuming you use a 5-zone system)—or that you simplify your zones to “easy/no-mans-land/hard.”
Threshold training
The opposite of polarized training: spend all your time in Zones 3/4. There seem to be different definitions for this (just as there are different definitions of zones), but the general idea seems to be steady-state training at 75–90% of FTP. Current scholarship seems to be that polarized training gets results faster, but threshold training has a lot of adherents.
Sweetspot training
Same as threshold training
Moderate intensity continuous training (MICT)
Same as threshold training
High-volume training
Long miles at low intensity. Also called “base mileage.” My understanding is that you’re supposed to have a lot of base mileage before you attempt higher-intensity training.
Cadence
Pedal speed, measured in rpm. Most experienced road cyclists aim to keep their cadence around 80–90 rpm. There’s evidence that lower cadences are more energy-efficient, but it’s easier to produce more power at higher cadences.
Bike computer
Also called a “head unit.” Bike computers used to just compute riding time, speed, and distance, and if you were really fancy, you got one with a barometric altimeter. Those still exist, but these days, fancier ones are tantamount to smartphones (many of them run the Android OS), and connect to a constellation of other devices.
Heartrate monitor (HRM)
There are two types: the traditional chest strap, which monitors the electrical activity in your chest muscles, and the newer optical type, often built into a watch or armband, which visually detects the changes in your veins as blood flows through (word of the day for this: photoplethysmograph). Chest straps are usually cheaper and have longer battery life. Some of the optical ones can also work as pulse oximeters.
Power meter
A meticulously calibrated strain gauge applied to a part of the bike’s drivetrain (pedals, crankarms, crank spider, rear hub) that transmits its readings to a bike computer. Although they’re coming down in price, power meters are still really expensive, and add at least $200 to the price of whatever part they’re attached to. Having a power meter on the bike has transformed competitive cycling, as racers know how much power they can put out for how long, and don’t make heroic-but-doomed breakaways.
Smart trainer
An old-fashioned stationary trainer would usually let you vary resistance manually, but did not calibrate this beyond “easy” to “hard.” A smart trainer uses computer control to apply resistance, and can measure power reliably. Smart trainers can use smartphones or bike computers as their controllers and front ends.
Golden Cheetah
Freeware analytic software. I first downloaded it about four years ago, and was so confused by what I was seeing that did not look at it again until last week. I still don’t understand half of what’s going on in there, but I’ve got a little bit of a handle on it.

Formulas for various concepts

Gears

SRAM just introduced a new version of their top-end road group, Red, with a different approach to gear ratios that they claim gives more range and tighter spacing. This smelled like marketing hokum to me.

Warning extreme nerdery follows.

900 miles

At the end of July, I had a routine doctor’s visit. Got on the scale. Clocked in at 170 lb. I hadn’t weighed that much since 1991. So I got back on my bike.

I still remember when I was six years old and my father took the training wheels off my bike and convinced me to ride it. I was terrified. He ran alongside me as I rode around the block. (My little sister, in contrast, took her training wheels off by herself, leaned her bike against our father’s truck, climbed aboard, and rode off.)

After that I got the hang of it, and bikes became an important part of my life. I started going on long-distance rides when I was 13. I did a little bike touring in high school, and I competed in some triathlons and bike races starting right after I graduated high school.

I didn’t have a bike during the time I lived in Japan, and when I was living in Chicago for a couple of years after that, I had my road bike but didn’t use it much (thus the 170 lb).

After I moved back to Austin in 1992, I got back into riding, and it was a great time to be a road cyclist in Austin—there were a bunch of then-pointless and unused roads that were like a playground for cyclists—360, Southwest Parkway, Bee Cave, and so on. I hardened up and could motor all day. On one occasion, I rode the 165 miles to a friend’s place in Houston in 9 hours flat. Some months later, I did it again, 20 minutes faster.

In 2000, a lot of stuff in my life changed, and I found myself cycling less and less, but in 2010, I started riding regularly again as I prepared for my Southern Tier ride, which I completed in October that year.

But that wrecked me—my upper body was emaciated when I finished. I remember at the end of the ride struggling to lift my 30-lb bike over my head. I decided I needed some kind of a whole-body workout. I signed up for a bootcamp class, and stuck with it until it petered out several years later. I never found a replacement that interested me, so I was back to a relatively inactive lifestyle (thus the 170 lb).

As of today, I’ve logged 900 miles since that doctor’s visit. I’ve clawed back a fair amount of lost fitness, and lost the weight I wanted to lose. But I’ve got a long way to go before I’ve got the level of fitness I had when I was younger—if in fact it’s possible to attain that again. It would have been better all around if I had stayed more active.

Four years

Four years ago today, I was smack in the middle an adventure: a transcontinental bike ride.

When I finished that ride, my body was wasted: I had lost at least 15 pounds. You could see my ribs through my back. I decided it was time to find a more whole-body workout. I started doing a boot-camp workout with Gwen. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed it, exactly, but it was definitely good for me. After a few months, I had finally resolved some weak spots left over from my broken pelvis, and had built up core strength that I’d really never had before. I was pretty regular about it for the next 3½ years or so, going three times a week, occasionally taking a month off when life got crazy. Boot camp completely displaced cycling for me. I didn’t do any serious riding after I got home from my big ride, only commuting around town.

A couple of months ago, that boot camp class ceased to exist as such when the trainer started a gym; he offers something similar at the gym, but I realized I don’t want to go to a gym. I was also missing riding. Today I went out with a friend for my first ride in four years. My neck’s a little stiff, and I was tired earlier than I should be, but it was good to get out there.

I still need to do some kind of whole-body workout. But I need to keep riding my bike.

Bike-share systems and the poor

This morning there was a story on NPR about bike sharing, specifically how it doesn’t do a good job of serving the poor. There are basically three reasons for this:

  1. The bike stations are not located in areas most useful to poor people;
  2. You need a debit card or credit card to use the system;
  3. Bike-share programs are expensive.

The story got me thinking about all the ways it’s expensive to be poor, and they’re certainly illustrated in this example.

To get a debit card, you need a bank account. To get a bank account, you usually need to scrape together $100 for an opening balance. This is not a huge hurdle to overcome, but if you never have $100 left at the end of your pay period, it’s going to take planning, and if life throws you a curveball before you’ve got that $100 saved up, you’re back to square one.

I looked at the prices for bike-share programs. Chicago’s Divvy has two price structures: yearly memberships and day rates. $70/year or $7/day, plus usage: in both cases you get 30-minute trips for free, but if you’ve got a longer bike trip than that, you get dinged $1.50 or $2.00 per 30 minutes. Austin’s nascent bike-share system has a similar breakdown, but is slightly more expensive.

So if you’re poor, the annual plans are probably out just because of the upfront costs, even though on a per-day basis, they’re a much better deal. If anything, you’re on the daily plan (Austin also has a weekly plan), although again, this presupposes you’ve got a bank account.

What about getting your own bike? You can get a beater bike on Craigslist. There are bikes listed there right now in the $20–50 range, so if you’re poor, the break-even point for rent vs own comes quickly—within one pay period. If you could afford the daily bike rental, you could afford to buy a bike. If you’re going to use a bike for commuting to and from work, it would be a no-brainer. It would also be a no-brainer for someone with more discretionary income who wants to commute by bike.

So given that anybody with even marginal math skills could figure out that ownership beats rental for routine, day-to-day bike usage, what’s the use-case for rental? It’s for when you’re out of your routine. Non-routine uses are hard to predict—it seems redundant to point that out. That makes the best placement of bike stations problematic.

Another obvious use case is tourism, and from what I’ve seen in Chicago and San Antonio, the placement of bike stations clearly targets tourists.

I don’t think it would be a bad idea for bike-sharing systems to be more accessible to the poor, but as long as those systems are run by private companies trying to turn a profit, it’s going to be difficult to balance that equation. Organizations like the Yellow Bike Project can do more to improve bike mobility for the poor right now, by providing them with their own bikes, teaching them how to maintain bikes, and giving them access to shop space.

Thoughts on an iPhone app for bike touring

I’ve played around with a number of iPhone apps for cyclists. None of the ones I’ve looked at are really optimized for bike touring—instead, they’re mostly oriented towards fitness cycling, which has somewhat different goals.

An iPhone app for bike touring would need to overcome the problem of battery life and fulfill three main tasks. Battery life isn’t as big a problem as it is generally made out to be, but even in a best-case scenario, it would be difficult to get a solid 24 hours of use out on a single charge when using the iPhone as a bike computer for a big part of the day.