Bicycling

Anthony Williams stepped off his bicycle late Saturday morning and let out a soft groan as he sank into a red folding camp chair on the side of a gravel road. A fine layer of brown dust covered him, from his pink helmet all the way down to his patched, black leggings.

Someone handed him a paper plate with two tortillas filled with peanut butter and honey. He slowly took several bites then paused, too exhausted to notice the honey dripping onto his lap.

“I’m having a really hard time staying awake,” he said.

The 25-year-old St. Paul man had just bicycled 124 miles in roughly nine hours — but he was only halfway to the finish of The Day Across Minnesota, a 242-mile ultra-endurance cycling race known as “The DAMn.”

The goal is pretty straightforward: Push off at midnight from Gary, S.D., a hamlet on Minnesota’s western border, and pedal to Hager City, Wis., just across the Mississippi River from Red Wing, Minn., before midnight strikes again.

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TL;DR - It was fine, though I know my limits. Test in safe place if you want to try. Biggest issues are condensation making the mask slip down and finding a way to cleanly pack it away.

Although I'm lucky to have a rail trail in my city, I have to ride beside vehicles for most of the trip to get there. This includes getting over some fairly substantial hills which obviously makes me breath quite heavily. Usually I would run out of breath on the second hill and have to take a break, but recently I've also been having coughing fits. This might be psychosomatic as I've learned about how bad exhaust fumes are for your health (thanks NJB). Regardless, I started wearing a cheap respirator from the Orange Box store.

Certainly it makes it more difficult to breath, but for me it's a net gain. No more coughing fits, I can make it over that second hill and the dummy in the massive cope-wagon doesn't bother me as much.

The only trouble I have is packing it away once I get to the trail and the moisture from my breath builds up in the mask so it starts slipping down my face and blocks my nose. I think I'll have to get a more expensive mask to solve that issue.

As a disclaimer, I've been in the cadets and have years of martial arts training, so I know my limits. I suspect some people that try to wear a respirator while cycling might pass out, which is not a good thing to do when the people beside you are putting their convenience over your health and safety.

Stay safe (and healthy) out there.

Hey y'all! Wondering if people will share their opinions please on these two new Gravel bikes I am looking at.

First, I ride casually, on the weekends. I want to spend equal time on- and off-road; there are lots of compacted gravel and dirt roads near me I want to ride. I have a road bike now, but its 25mm wheels and its slicks don't do dirt and gravel like I want.

First, the Salsa Warbird C GRX 600 1x:
https://www.salsacycles.com/bikes/2024-warbird-c-grx-600-1x

$3300 USD MSRP but a LBS has one for $2800.

Warbird C GRX 600 is a carbon gravel bike with a few tricks you won’t find anywhere else. The frameset features our gravel race geometry, a perfect blend of stability and comfort that only comes from decades of gravel riding experience. Our Class 5™ VRS (vibration reduction system) cuts chatter — and fatigue — from rugged roads that would otherwise beat you up.

OTOH, the Canyon CF SL 7:
https://www.canyon.com/en-us/outlet-bikes/gravel-bikes/grail-cf-sl-7/3095.html

Actually a mix of GRX 600 and 800 parts and an FSA Crank.

If you need to shake up your riding routine, then gravel is the answer. The lightweight Grail CF SL 7 is a hugely versatile bike ready for all your year-round off-road adventures, and comes complete with Shimano’s GRX810 gravel groupset.

I'm leaning toward the Canyon, but would appreciate any feedback / other ideas you all have for a gravel bike in the same price range, available new in the US. Cheers!

Edited for clarity.

Saturday evening casual rides, as it cools down after a hot day, are the best.

I'm considering Fiido Titan as e-bike for shopping and short distance commuting. It's hilly where I need it. Any thoughts on bike quality or anything else? From a review on YouTube it seems decent enough. TIA

My first thought was that it is a stick, but then I saw that it's moving.

After a conversation in this community and people showing off their bikes I wanted to share mine too. My Zero AM made by Bird.

Started like this in October -

Over the winter I stripped it down and painted it all myself in pink with a yellow pearl. Replaced a few bits that needed it like headset and BB and serviced everything else.

Current spec is:

XT group set with Raceface Aeffect cranks and Raceface Chester pedals.

DMR wingbars, grips and stem with a nukeproof headset and Rockshox Revelation upfront

Halo Vapour 50 rims with Maxxis Minion DHF 2.8 on the Front and Vittoria Mazza 2.6 on the rear

Generic dropper post and saddle.

I even colour coded my brake levers -

I'll post my commuter / training bike after I've given it a good clean next, if anyone is interested :)

So I have "new" bike (subjectively) about 9 months. And I spent about 2000 € on it (bike, and some accessories - rack, bags...) and I can tell that it is lot of bike for not that much money.

So now when I look back I can't see it as "expensive" bike, just as reasonably priced for its purpose. I use it every day to commute and as bikepacking/touring bike so now it has ~6000 km.

So how much are you willing to spend on bike?

Edit: So I read your comments and I probably need to clarify little bit.

• I use the bike for everything instead of car so even nicer more expensive bike for me is justifiable.
• I also think that the bike industry is bonkers right now about shiny new expensive things.
• For me there is few types of riders and all parties try to upsell them some shit, there aren't any 500€ bike with flat bars and rigid fork where I am. All of the bikes at this price point have shitty suntour fork, bad saddle, useless pedals and shitty tires. From my perspective they are expensive on the parts that don't matter and cheap out on stuff that matters. If someone sell something like that (flat bar gravel with quality parts where it matters) it would be gamechanger.
• I had to build my bike, nothing like that (full steel gravel/bikepacking/do it all bike) wasn't on the market/second hand market. It add to the price a bit. And it was about month before the prices get down to reasonable levels after pandemic.

After wanting a modern mountain bike for the past 5 years, I finally went and got one. It's a lot of fun.

This is replacing a ~2006 Schwinn Mesa that I never ride anymore, because the trails are too rough for it where I live.

The dropper post is compressed if you're wondering why it looks like the seat is too low 😊

Had it for a few days already but finally got around to taking a decent picture.

File under: random stories from the history of cycling

Just tried commuting on my bike from Santa Monica to downtown Culver City today. I took the Exposition bike path, which was fine until I needed to get off of it to head south.

Google recommended I take National and--lo and behold--there's no bike lane with cars flying past at 55mph+ on blind hills. That's a death trap.

On the way home I left early to avoid traffic. I took Venice Blvd, since it has a protected bike lane all the way until McLaughlin which Google Maps called "bicycle friendly." No bike lane, of course, with cars flying past leaving a foot of distance between me and death. One testy driver in a BMW didn't want to wait the 15 seconds for me to pedal into the left turn lane to get back onto the Exposition bike path, honking and then flying by nearly killing me. Jeez lady, I'm not the city planner. Don't kill me to save 15 seconds.

How does Culver City put zero bike lanes going north to south connecting to the Exposition path? How do these drivers maintain their licenses?

What's a cyclist to do?

Eurosport started sending e-mails that they are discontinuing streaming (premium) service in favor of HBO MAX. Which is much, like 3x more expensive if you happen to watch only bicycling or some other sports and you don't care about other stuff. Even more odd is that they were sending e-mails like a couple of weeks ago that they were just increasing the price. So, that's it for me watching bicycling, I guess. It's been nice while it lasted, then corporate greed took over.

Hello,

I have an ELEMNT BOLT V2 GPS BICYCLE COMPUTER. Now I'm planning a longer bike tour with breaks. The bike computer stays on. Can you turn off the bolt to save power and then reactivate it to continue recording?

Best regards

Hi friends! I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads with my cycling journey right now, and I'd really love to get some feedback from some of y'all.

For background, I started getting into longer distance cycling events last year as a way to stay healthy and fit, especially since my partner and I have an 18 month toddler. Cycling is both a mental health and physical fitness outlet for me.

I'm riding a Surly LHT with 700x32 Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, so I'm almost always at the back of the pack. I am not part of a team, so I'm never able to draft behind people either.

Last year I completed 2 Gran Fondos, one of which was the Whistler Sea to Sky Fondo. Yesterday was my first ride of the year and despite spending all winter with TrainerRoad 3 times a week, my time was actually slower than it was a year before and I missed the cutoff time.

Granted, I had an exhausting week leading up to their ride, I got slightly drunk 2 nights before the ride which resulted in bad sleep, and then a toddler-induced bad nights sleep the night before the ride.

Needless to say, that was pretty discouraging, especially since my plan has been to try and go for even longer rides this year (a 157km ride on July 1 and a 200km in September). My partner wants me to back down from leaning into these fondo style rides (and the longer ones too obvi), and in my disappointment from this weekend I'm inclined to go along with that.

But here are my questions:

• How much should I read into my results this weekend? Could it just be chalked up to a hard week and a bad nights sleep?

• If I had a really hard day going for 120km on June 9, should I pull back on trying to go for 157km on July 1 and 200km in September?

• If anyone is a toddler-parent who works full time and engages in long-distance cycling, I'd love to hear how you make that work

Paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/3tLtL

The crash occurred on September 25, 2021, the first crisp day of fall after a hot Texas summer. Claudius Galo intended to ride a hundred miles or more that morning. “There was a chill in the air. It felt so good. The energy was high,” he recalls of the small group that gathered to ride with him.

Galo had moved to the Houston area from Rio de Janeiro, about 14 years prior. A calm and inquisitive engineer who works in the oil and gas industry, Galo had become unhealthy and overweight in his late thirties. He tried running but got hurt, so his doctor recommended adding swimming and cycling. Now 45, he’d lost 60 pounds and completed six Ironmans and almost a dozen half Ironmans. Tamy Valiente, 45, had come to the United States from Costa Rica nine years before. Inspired by the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, in her twenties, she’d dreamt of becoming a competitive bike rider, but first, “I had to raise my babies,” she says. After going through a divorce, she eventually saved enough money to buy a bike frame and slowly began building her first racing bike part by part. She would often wake at 4 a.m. to train on the narrow roads close to her home back near San José, where buses crept by within inches of her handlebar. To Valiente, the U.S. felt like paradise. “The roads seemed safe. The traffic laws were actually enforced,” she says.

On the day of the crash, David Reynolds, a 45-year-old tattooed photographer with two teenage children, had ridden 11.5 miles to meet the group at Hockley Community Center, about 30 miles west of downtown Houston. Cycling was his “Zen time,” when he could zone out and let all his worries wash through him. Though he wasn’t training for an event, he had ridden for nearly 600 consecutive days. “I just like to ride,” he says. The group that rolled out that morning included three other experienced cyclists: Craig Staples, Brad Stauffer, and Keith Conrad. The six regularly met up to ride through Waller County, an agricultural and ranching community just outside the sprawling metropolis. The group would become known as the Waller 6.

. . .

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15834699

Ooga Booga

Biking in this petiod can be a pain for people with pollen allergy.

Do you gave any tip to share? Do you wear a mask? What kind? Anything to protect your eyes?

Thsnk you

(Picture source: Brainwashed https://www.flickr.com/people/39453974@N04 )