Pounding out miles on the bike trainer through the shorter days of winter can be a real motivational challenge especially after a long day at the office. Hooking the bike up to the trainer, strapping on the heart rate monitor, watching the watt meter and simply turning over the pedals can be a real drag. Three Legs Cycling (3LC) has a series of training DVDs utilizing a different and simpler approach to training that promises a more exciting training experience.
The 3LC series DVDs are designed to help you stay fit, become stronger and stay motivated through the winter, but instead of requiring a host a monitoring devices, they have designed the series behind the philosophy of leg speed. Hook the bike up to the trainer, pop in the DVD and ride. The videos will take you through the workout and during certain intervals, instruct you to increase or decrease your leg speed. Even if you do not have a computer with cadence, simply watch the riders on the video and match their leg speed. If you feel good, put the bike in a harder gear and maintain the same cadence as the riders in the video. The beauty of the video is if you are having a lackluster day, simply put the bike in an easier gear, but match the cadence of the riders. It is that simple – always match the cadence.
The makers of PowerPlate have a new trick up their sleeve, or at least a new piece of workout equipment. The PowerBIKE looks like an attractive spin bike, but the pedal and crank system produces vibrations. These vibrations create muscle stimulation for the legs and glutes as you spin.
Blip tubes are a clever design by Urbane Innovations, “that saves waste, saves packaging, and saves the time of explaining tube choices to consumers.” Lofty goals for a fundamental piece of cycling equipment. But tires and tubes are certainly often replaced items on a bike. So any efficiency gained has a large impact overall. Bicycle tubes come in a mind boggling array of sizes. Blip tubes seek to remove some of that confusion and help the environment at the same time.
Personal expression. We do it through the clothes we wear, the style of our hair, the trinkets on our desk. In just about every part of our lives we are expressing who we are. Now, for about 40 bucks, you can show a little more personal expression through the bicycle you ride – just as long as it is a ‘clean’ expression.
The iPhone can be a great cycling computer, but this means exposing the expensive smartphone to the elements. For those who go off road there is the StormCruiser from Joy Factory, a bicycle mount designed to tackle spills and the elements. The StormCruiser is designed for the iPhone 4/4S, and the scratch resistant case offers protection from water, dust and grease. It can be mounted on the body frame, between the handle bar, or on the top tube.
A majority of bike shop are owned and staffed by knowledgeable and honest people, but have you ever walked into a bike shop and felt that you were being steered towards a particular bike or size that didn’t seem to fit right? Were you told that a certain model was not available in another color? If you have run into this before at a bike shop, the best option is to either walk out or find another sales person, but what do you do if that shop is the only one in town that is an authorized dealer for the brand of bike that you want? Another option is to arm yourself with knowledge, and Felt Bicycles is helping you do that – at least for its brand.
What is the cyclist to when the white stuff starts falling? Hang up the bike and grab the skis, or grind out the miles on an indoor trainer? With the newer breed of snow or ‘fat’ bikes hitting the market, the cycling season does not have to stop in the winter. The folks behind Twenty2 Cycles of Vail, Colorado agree with this idea and have introduced their own line of snow bikes, the Bully and Big Fat Bully (BFB).
It is quite possible that if you have been a cyclist few any number of years, you have a number of bike parts and frames hanging around the garage. Some of these frames might have been held onto for sentimental value or inherited from others, but for some reason they are still around. If the dream of building one of these back into a working bike has been inhibited by the lack of components that fit, Paul Component Engineering may have a product to come to the rescue – at least with regards to the rear wheel. Paul Component Engineering has a rear hub that offers the flexibility to fit multiple bike frames, spanning decades of production years. Not only is the Jono Hub a high quality hub, but it is accompanied by the parts needed to properly adjust the hub to the rear spacing of that ‘project bike’.
Earlier this year former McLaren Cars design engineer Richard Thorpe rolled out the Gocycle, the first generation electric bike, and soon after announced plans for an updated version. Now Karbon Kinetics Limited has released the technical specifications for its upcoming Gocycle G2, which will weigh in at a lean 32.8 pounds, and feature a German-made 250 watt electric motor with in-house controller for a top speed of 15.5 mph in pedelec or 20 mph in empower mode. The G2 will propel riders for up to 40 miles in the pedelec mode or 20 miles in the empower mode on a single battery charge, and riders should be able to juice up and go again in about three and a half hours.
If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen they say. But if you can’t stand the cold and wind as you ride or you need to better way to warm up before a competition, it my be time to for your to get some rollers. Bicycle rollers have been around for over 110 years and have stood the test of time simply due to the fact that they work. These offer a very effective way to train or warm up your muscles along with helping you improve your bike handling skills off the road. Rollers are available in all different drum diameters and drum widths, plus any number of different features including a folding frame for easier transportation; parabolic drum ends to aid in keeping you from riding off of the sides; flywheels to simulate the ‘feel’ of the road; and resistance units to make your training that much harder. The Italian manufacturer, Elite, has released a set of rollers that packages parabolic drum ends, a folding frame and a magnetic unit in a very compact and easy to transport or store unit – the V-Arion rollers.