Red Bull Photography - Black Light Bikes

Red Bull Photography partner Marcelo Maragni put together a unique project utilizing special paint, UV lights, and some downhill mountain bikers.  Check out the photos at Red Bull Photography.

Below is a making of video.


Black Light Bikes from Red Bull Photography on Vimeo.

LIKEAVOS 2.3

CXHairs does tremendous cyclocross race recaps with insightful commentary on key points during the race and the skills that make (or break) the winning move.  Check out his latest work in LIKEAVOS 2.3.

Disc Axle Standards

As someone who has made the jump to disc brakes and enjoys wheel building, Tyler Benedict's article on axle standards was particularly interesting.

2016 Axle Standards

Balance = Working Smarter

I work for a Fortune 500 company in an area where as you move up, the idea that you should be "putting in the hours" is prevelant.  While I'm not opposed to hard work, I've typically found that I put in less hours than my peers but do as much if not more work.  I think a key to my success so far has been an ability early on to define the critical elements and do them well.  There's lots of information about how to do this but the below article is one that articulates well how I find success.  I especially relate to his comments about ruthlessly scheduling, setting you end time and working backwards, and focusing on the deep stuff.

Eric Barker: Cal Newport's Keys to Managing Time

Part Deux

Happy New Year!! So a lot has changed since I last blogged. It's hard to know where to start and how to reintroduce this blog and it's current direction.

When I was blogging last, it was primarily focused on road racing. That was a fun chapter in life but one that's pretty much over for me. I had to take a break from it for the past several years as I focused on finishing grad school and a progressing career. Coming out on the other side, I don't plan to start road racing again. I still love riding and want to race cyclocross but there's a different balance to life. I want this blog to reflect that balance. I also think I've grown as an individual, becoming more confident and secure in who I am. I'm not what is romanticized in our cycling culture. I'm not a rebel, hipster, artist, or skinny racer. I'm a fairly normal guy with a great family, good career, that loves food and travel. In addition to the balance, I want this blog to be reflective of who I am, not modeling after what others do well. 

To sum it up, this blog will be about sharing my passion for cycling to include information produced by others that I find inspiring. I will also share general musings about life and career. I hope reading this inspires the confidence, balance, and honesty in others. 

Thank you,

White Hot

I'm well aware that I have some bike post that I need to get to. I want to take some video of the bikes to go with the posts and I'll try to get some of those done this afternoon. In the mean time, I thought I would show off my new kicks.

I've been a huge Sidi fan for a while. They hold up amazingly well and most of the small parts are replaceable so you can wear them for years. My original Sidi's were a set of silver Hi-Techs that had the dual ratchets and the typical top strap with buckle. They've served me well for 4 years but a couple of crashes have led to some serious scuffs and caused one of the buckles to get finicky. I liked some of the other Sidi's that were out but nothing grabbed me enough to justify moving past these still functional if not quite as aesthetically pleasing shoes. Then Sidi released the new Wire and Wire Vent. The Wire has two independent ratchets on the lower portion of the shoe and then a ratchet versus a buckle on the top strap. Ratchets allow for a lot better management of the tension resulting in a better fit in my opinion. The Vent version also has a sliding vent in the bottom of the shoe along with mesh areas on the top to help your foot breath. This is especially important in the warmer months we have here. So it all came down to which color. Sidi had the standard and classy black, a special edition neon yellow, and white. So here they are....

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Travel, Changes, and the Bike(s)

I'm back after spending July till early October overseas with work. It was a great experience but generally not good for my fitness. The other way to look at it was that it was a forced hiatus for my body and now being back my body feels great and recovers much faster then it did prior to the travel.

Prior to the travel, I was feeling very uninspired about the road bikes and was actually riding a carbon 29er I had built some. That was until a couple of hard crashes right before I left had me deciding that mountain biking wasn't for me and to focus on road and CX. So selling the mountain bike, the financial benefits of an overseas assignment, plus the lonely downtime in the hotel room meant a lot of bike forum surfing and eBay shopping. The result was minor to major (as in all together new) overhauls for my road and CX bikes. I will cover these in separate post.

The major philosophy change in all this was to try to pair down my equipment. In the past, I've had tubular race wheels and clincher training wheels with a set of each for each bike. The race wheels are definitely the nicer of the two but with my lack of racing over the past 1 1/2 years, most had probably been ridden 2-3 times during that span. So after lots of research and buoyed by my experience going tubeless on the mountain bike, I decided to sell off my clinchers and go all tubular. That way I would have 1 set of wheels for each bike plus 1 spare road and 1 spare CX wheelset. It would also mean that I would actually be riding the nice wheels versus leaving them hanging in garage.

Stretching tires

 

So once I got back, it was a flurry of re-vamping the wheels, rebuilding one set with tubular rims, building two new sets of tubular wheels, adding sealant to the tubular tires, and gluing up tires. So far I've had 4 road rides plus 3 short CX races and really enjoyed the switch. The tubulars ride better, the wheels I'm riding are much nicer, and the one flat (pure bad luck, the sidewall was torn) was corrected fairly easily by pulling the tire off, mounting the spare. It's still early in this experiment and so I'll check back in a couple of months to let you know if this will stick.

A couple of sets glued

 

A random picture of Jens Voigts bike equipment at a local bike shop. He was doing an upcoming local ride and his equipment happened to be delivered when I stopped into get some more sealant. There were two Leopard Trek bike bags in addition to pictured wheel and gear bags. Is it strange that I was more excited to be close to his equipment then him?

 

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