In The Know Cycling

Every year around this time, I write a post reminiscing about a few of my favorite cycling things from the past year.

Typically, I start working on a list of what those things might be around the middle of November leading up to the US Thanksgiving holiday when we celebrate all the things we are thankful for. Between then and the December holidays I bring the list into focus and write the post usually while listening to some jazz. I find jazz and particularly John Coltrane’s music gives me the opening and energy to think more clearly and expansively.

This year, it’s been very hard to get a list and post together of my favorite cycling things. The pandemic and all the horrible loss, sickness, economic hardship, societal and personal stress has made cycling and writing about cycling gear and kit more of a palliative than the joy it normally is for me.

While I’ve always jokingly referred to cycling as “my drug of choice”, I never realized how true that was until this year when things have seemed so dark in our world.

As you may know, My Favorite Things is the name of a song from the 60-year old musical The Sound of Music. Ironically, it is sung in the original Broadway production by a nanny to the seven young children from an affluent family in her care during a scene when she is trying to take their minds off of a raging thunderstorm going on just outside their windows.

She sings of rather fanciful things – Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens – that would seem to matter little in the scary world outside other than as a distraction from it with a cheerful appeal to their imagination.

At the end of each verse that combines ever more inventive favorites – Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels – she puts all of it in context with the chorus:

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad

This song and its context made my efforts to come up with my favorite cycling things seem more appropriate than ever this year.

And as I listened once again to Coltrane’s uplifting remake and performance of the song, I knew it had to be done.

With homage to its writers Rogers and Hammerstein, to Mary Martin and Julie Andrews who famously performed it on stage and in the movies, and to John Coltrane who took it to an entirely new level, I offer you my favorite cycling things of 2020.

While I know it’s only a distraction from the metaphorical thunderstorms of the real world that we adults have been living in this year, I hope my list and reflecting on your own favorite cycling things makes you feel less bad about our current world and looking forward to the year ahead.

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Indoor Cycling

While many of us have long ridden indoors for its off-season training value and when the weather outside keeps us in, the various indoor cycling tools and how we used them this year seemed to take us past a tipping point. We can now ride in communities with a working indoor cycling ecosystem that I’ve never experienced before and I suspect many of you may not have either.

Zwift certainly upped its game with more access to new courses, events, and races. While gamers always have used it, Discord became a way for me to catch up and strategize with riding partners that seemed almost on par with cafe stop socializing and how I envision pro teams communicate on the road.

Once the technology got sorted out, I dare say that Zwift and Discord may have provided a safer and clearer communal experience than I’ve enjoyed on some group rides.

Chapeau to event and club organizers who have been using these tools to give us the motivation to keep riding together, at least virtually.

My indoor cycling “getaway”

Many trainers you may have wanted for your inside rides have been out of stock for long periods this year. Yet it now appears that more have become available as we get into the North American winter season. And while I don’t test them, the independent reviews I’ve read suggest that most trainers are built on mature technology, are now pretty good, and differ primarily based on price and features.

I’ve negotiated a 10% off deal on Tacx and Saris smart trainers in stock at TrustPilot 5-star rated Power Meter City for In The Know Cycling readers (use code ITK10). You can also see a wide range of models and brands from lower-priced fluid trainers and rollers to top-end smart, direct-drive trainers available at other stores I recommend using my Know’s Shop comparison pricing tool.

Of course, more people were riding bikes this year than ever. Buying bikes online (see my updated post about how and where to do it here) became not only a good option but the only one for many as getting access to bike shops was tough and finding shops that had bikes at all, let alone the ones people wanted was often harder.

We enthusiasts never stopped riding outside but for me, most of it was solo riding. Group riding was limited to trust-bubbles and events and races were scrapped almost completely. As a result, I probably did more inside cycling this year and certainly had a better time doing it than ever before.

Lower-Priced Carbon Wheels

One of my favorite things of the past year was seeing some of the leading performance carbon wheelsets makers introducing new models priced well below where they have historically sold their wheels.

Three wheelsets in particular caught my attention.

Bontrager Aeolus Pro 37 – A $1300 wheelset without one or more major performance weaknesses of others in the same price category – like stiffness, comfort, acceleration – that limit what you can do or how much you can enjoy riding them. No, the Aeolus Pro 37 doesn’t perform nearly as well as its Aeolus XXX 4 all-around big brother or Aeolus RSL 37 light climbing, fast engaging twin sister. But it’s also nearly half their $2400 price tags and qualifies for the same free crash replacement or repair policy no matter how you might damage them.

ENVE 65 – This wheelset is for those enthusiasts riding a lot of flats and looking for a deep, well-mannered aero wheelset but who don’t need or want to go all-in on an aero frame, gear, and kit for TT and flat crit racng. At $1600 it gets you a lot of the pure speed performance of $2000 to $2500 wheels made by others if not the snap and aggressive road racing feel on the range of flats, rollers, and climbs you’ll get with ENVE’s nearly thousand dollars more expensive 5.6 disc wheelset.

Zipp 303 Firecrest Disc – An excellent road climber and gravel wheelset that targets the same rider as those drawn to the more expensive ENVE 3.4AR. This Firecrest sells for $1900 and replaces, but doesn’t come near the road performance of the retired $3200 Zipp 303 NSW disc at the top of the 303 disc wheelset line.

You might be thinking: But Steve, there are a lot of carbon wheels that sell for less than those and have been for some time. Get with the program man!

I’m well aware of what’s out there at even lower prices than these three. Indeed, I did a ton of research and testing in 2019 that resulted in two very long posts (Part 1 and Part 2) and a lot of reviews about what I’ve called value-carbon wheels.

And I think carbon wheels selling for under $1500 and some for less than $1000 from the likes of Prime, Hunt, Yoeleo, Light Bicycles, Farsports, and others have contributed to Bontrager, ENVE, and Zipp coming out with lower-priced wheels like those above.

However, I and my fellow testers have noted real performance differences between the lower-priced wheels from Bontrager, ENVE, and Zipp, companies who are part of a group I call “Integrateds” because they design, test, make, sell, and service their wheels and those from “Branders” including Prime and Hunt who are excellent marketers but largely source wheels designed and made by others.

The same goes for the performance gap between the lower-priced wheels from the Integrateds and those from overseas “Manufacturers” which are primarily in the business of making open mold carbon rims but sell some of them to cyclists assembled with inexpensive hubs and spokes and very limited warranties.

The average weekend warrior may not feel the difference in performance between wheels from one of the Integrateds and those from a Brander or Manufacturer. Their experience may be animated by knowing they are riding a carbon wheelset that cost them little more than the price of an alloy one. A serious enthusiast or racer will notice, however, and will appreciate the value of a better-performing, better-warrantied product.

The good news is that the price gap between these newer, lower-priced wheelsets from the Integrateds and the value carbon ones from Branders and Manufacturers has closed a bit and will make it easier for us enthusiasts to justify going with better performing wheels.

All Things Gravel

Yeah, if you haven’t been riding gravel, you may feel like you’ve heard and read too much about what probably seems like another overhyped cycling industry commercial push.

But hear me out.

While I can’t deny the innate marketing impulses of an industry always looking for the next breakaway segment, I can attest to the pure fun and great change of pace I get riding a drop-bar bike on dirt and gravel roads. And if you are looking for more endurance or racing challenges on a bike, riding gravel offers a whole new way to push yourself and suffer.

Because the road surface can change so much on a gravel ride, it’s almost as if you are riding in three dimensions. Honestly, I focus a whole lot more on going forward and not falling off the back while cornering left and right on a road bike than I do about the changes in road surface.

On gravel, all three dimensions are in play. And because there are no road commissioners giving designers and construction crews maximum gradients, you go up and down a whole lot more often and at steeper pitches on dirt and gravel roads and singletrack.

Weeeeeeee!

Missing the joy of outdoor group road riding this year, I went off and did a whole lot of gravel riding on weekends and reviewed gravel tires, wheels, and shoes in the process. These and a few other posts are in their own section on gravel here on the site.

Even when group road riding and events resume, I’ll likely be missing some of them as I set out on gravel roads and doing one of my new favorite things.

Nutrition and Sleep

For most of my time cycling, I’ve been a “self-coached” rider. That’s meant trying different ways to reach performance levels I targeted with absolutely no idea or expertise on how to get there. Needless to say, I usually didn’t and worked too hard trying.

Over the last several years I’ve attempted working with a real coach or trialed different packaged training programs developed for riders with goals similar to mine. In 2019, I found the right combination of these things to help reach my goals and continued on that path in 2020.

I’m still working hard but doing so in a more efficient way. Part of that improved efficiency is a better training plan. But a part that I no longer take for granted is eating well and getting good sleep.

Both nutrition and sleep take a level of discipline equal to that of following an on-the-bike plan. Nutrition also requires a lot of study or, in my case, podcast listening.

The FasCat Coaching Training Tips nutrition podcasts and tips have been a joy to listen to and read this year. They are well researched but presented in a conversational way that is very easy to digest. (Sorry, had to get at least one pun in there.) They’ve probably been the biggest reason why I’ve gotten lean while adding muscle and feeling properly fueled before, during, and after my rides to enable me to 8-10 hours/week of training.

While I find the TrainerRoad’s Ask a Cycling Coach podcasts crazy long and best to listen to while doing yard work or in the car, they often include a good discussion of a nutrition issue amongst the half dozen training topics they dig into each week. The discussion can get a bit nerdy and take some serious concentration (or repeat listening) but they really nail the details about what you should and shouldn’t do and are backed by a whole lot of scientific research that they’ve pulled together. Listening to these podcasts probably saves me 10x the time I’d spend if I did the research on my own, even if I had the ability to boil it all down to its essence.

Sleep? I can’t say I’m anywhere near figuring that one out. It’s been a very stressful year for all the reasons you likely have experienced yourself. Stress typically isn’t conducive to regular sleep.

Simple breathing meditation has helped me get to sleep and exhaustion from riding and stress often keeps me down. Trying to get to bed and get up at regular hours also helps. If I could just find a way to keep my mind at rest once I get to sleep, it would all go much better.

But, like my riding or anything else, I’ve got to keep working on my nutrition and sleep. And, believe it or not, focusing on these this year has been one of my favorite things as I’ve seen how much they improve my riding when I do them right.

Assos Kit

For years I was always more interested in the engineering and performance differences of bike gear than what I saw as the fit and fashion differences of cycling kit or the clothes, shoes, helmets, and sunglasses we cyclists wear.

As I’ve tested and reviewed more kit from more brands for more seasons and different types of riding, I’ve come to better appreciate not only their fit and fashion but also the role kit plays in improving my performance and pleasure on the bike. (Here’s the link to my comparative kit reviews.)

And when it comes to performance and pleasure, my favorite kit by far is the clothing made by Assos. As I reviewed some new categories of kit this year where Assos doesn’t make anything – gravel shoes and light and airy helmets to name two – I better appreciated the way Assos stands apart from others with the bibs, jerseys, jackets, and other cycling clothing that they do make.

Oh yes, I do like and wear clothes from Gore and Castelli and Santini and Ale and, and, and. Each makes some great kit. But Assos designs and makes theirs differently and those differences often separate the performance of their garments in ways that can make clothing, shoes, helmets, sunglasses, etc. from others seem more similar.

In addition to better appreciating this distinction when separating out the differences in the shoes and helmets I mentioned earlier, two moments crystallized this realization and caused me to include Assos on My Favorite Things list this year.

This fall, I did a 65-mile ride with my good cycling friend Dave through some beautiful small towns in northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Because we had been staying within our tight family bubbles, we hadn’t ridden together all year and had a lot of catching up to do. And because he is a far stronger rider than me, I had all I could do to keep up with him.

In fact, it was a fast ride and he pulled most of the way. I told him that if I caught Covid from riding in his draft, it would have been totally worth it.

As we pulled up to the church where we would briefly stop before heading home, we talked about what a super ride it had been and how great it was to ride together again. It was genuine, I was smiling and feeling fulfilled and ready to head off.

Dave paused for a moment and said “You convinced me to try the Assos bibs and man, they are incredible.” I was stunned, not that he had told me the Assos bibs were incredible, but that he had tried them and mentioned it. He is all about the gear, has probably a dozen bikes from classic independent and better-known brands, and is a Campy loyalist.

While he wears good kit, I can’t ever remember him bringing it up or talking about it unless prompted. This time, unprompted and with a reverence he shares only when talking about one of his bikes, he offered his superlative judgment of his Assos bibs. I could only smile, compliment him on his choice, and ride away thinking about what had just happened.

The other moment that brought Assos’ distinctiveness home for me was less eventful but equally satisfying. It was a cool, November morning, one of those days when I debate whether to put on bib shorts, tights or just leg warmers and fingerless or full-finger gloves.

I went with the leg warmers and full-finger gloves. The gloves were a pair of Assos spring/fall ones I had bought on sale earlier in the year but hadn’t worn yet.

As soon as I began riding and all throughout the ride, they just felt right. The way they fit the shape and movements of my fingers and hands so well, the comfort of the material, the way they seemed to both keep me warm and breathe at the same time, the way they allowed my hands to perform as if I wasn’t wearing gloves… Boy, did they ever get this piece of kit right.

For a relatively inexpensive item to perform so well made me smile and reflect again on how well and differently Assos does whatever they do with everything from them I’ve ever worn. I’d long recognized it and recommended their bibs, base layers, jerseys, and jackets. But, this rather simple piece of kit made me think about the distinctive performance of their kit once again.

Assos kit isn’t cheap and some have a hard time seeing its value despite its fit, performance, and comfort. If you’ve never tried something from Assos, I encourage you to do so. If it had been around when The Sound of Music was written, I could envision Comfortable Assos bibs and warm fall jackets fitting right in the lyrics alongside Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels. 

Among the stores I recommend from my Best Online Bike Store Rankings list, Competitive Cyclist has a 25% off sale on selected Assos kit now and has one of the better selections of their kit in the US. Chain Reaction Cycles and Wiggle have the best range at my recommended UK or European stores. Assos geo-restricts their sales to stores serving customers who live in the same region of the world.

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