Mojo cycling owner goes for a snowy ride in the UK

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makes me ALMOST wish we got this in SoCal. Almost.
but then I realize how much shoveling snow sucks and I laugh at all the suckers who have to deal with it every year.

Live 2 Ride: episode one

My kind of cycling team: Ironclad Cycling

Although I'm not sure what's up with the hottie in the animal mask. It's like furry fandom mixed with velo-geekery.

Today is recovery ride day. My legs feel like giant lumps of clay.

That being said, here is something which is decidedly NOT my style of cycling. I think the messenger-cool fad has safely subsided. Messengers ride like asshats because they HAVE TO in order to keep their jobs and get stuff to its destination on time. When us non initiated folks ride like that people rightfully think we are jerks. Still, I have to give credit: alleycats are one of the reasons I caught the racing virus.

Rumble Through the Bronx 7 2010 New York from crihs on Vimeo.

Cyclocross! Also does your new bike make you faster?

The 20k Time Trial is sort of the litmus test of your fitness. It's popular for guys training with power, and it's just long enough to let you know how your fitness is doing.
The guys over at Rapha did two 20k time trials: one with a "historic" racing bike, and one with a newer bike, clothing, and aerodynamic gear.
Interesting that the biggest complaint on the old bike was mostly the pedals. Still, a couple minutes of difference is a lot in a race, but to those who are not competing: save your money: you don't need a Specialized Shiv to ride fast.

Also, Long Beach cyclocross race this weekend. Will you be there?

Winter Training Starts NOW.

Had a great winter training session at Aire/Crank Cycling Studio in San Diego. Last Tuesday began the first of a series of custom workouts designed to basically destroy you and make you faster.
Seeing that I've never done a structured interval in my lifetime this was new to me. I always went by the European mode of "ride lots" (Thanks Merckx)

This, however, was something entirely new to me. I'm eagerly awaiting the power test results to see how I stacked up although I was able to maintain nearly 300 watts for an extended time.

In other news, the weather has been pretty strange lately, with a combination of clouds and rain (VERY unusual for California) or 90+ degree desert heat. It feels like I brought a bit of the schizophrenic Texas weather with me. The only thought I am left with is to take inspiration from this guy:

Oh yes, and here's a video of a guy riding a bike which is one fire. Thanks, Nick Pryde. If you guys gave me a race bike from your stable I can assure you I would NOT set it on fire. That's a promise.

You guys should send me a bike to race for this season

In the US, we have dudes hardparking their sedans on 20+ inch rims

In Europe they have country music with cyclocross footage?
are we really participating in the European version of Nascar?

a little part of me died. Just watch it on mute and pretend it's something cool like "In Flames"

A good documentary on Bicycle Hostility in South Carolina

Bikes In Columbia from Joshua Rainwater on Vimeo.

Interestingly enough I think this may apply to a lot more cities. I think it's worth a look, especially since the average person is extremely bicycle unfriendly. From simply not understanding why you would only pause at a stop sign rather than stop and unclip, to outright just wanting to ram us off the road, we experience a lot of hate for choosing an older more efficient means of transportation, or even amusement.

How many hipsters can you pack into a Jazz?

Oh my. I might have just lost control of my urine flow. That's some funny stuff right there. Kudos for mentioning my fav author, contemporary Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami.

Fixed Gear Freestyle: Fishing with sniper rifles.

I've never understood fixed gear freestyle, and yet completely understood it at the same time. All the tricks they are doing are really just the same things that I saw my "rad" buddies pulling in the 80's/90's(since I was the kid who, if I wanted to even go rollerblading, had to put on a full suit of armor before I was let out the door by my family. Probably why I enjoy skydiving and refer to my bone breaking crashes as "fun" these days).

Basically, it's taking something designed to do something completely different (a track bike designed for going really fast in a straight line) and fucking it up in a way that makes it capable of doing something totally different which requires a totally different tool. It's a bit like fishing with a sniper rifle, or that "music" that STOMP makes. No matter how awesome or fun it may look and sound, it's still a bunch of dudes hitting trash cans and tupperware since they apparently forgot that you didn't have to do that anymore once your parents finally forced you to take "music lessons" as a kid and, if you were unlucky, had the fun sucked out of it entirely by an angry Chinese woman telling you how to hold a violin. To this day I know why fiddles make us all feel mournful. It's her and her evil red eyes. That's how I remember it anyway.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah...FGFS (Fixed Gear Free-style). It's totally strange, and yet I love to watch it. It must have been the same feeling hockey players had for figure skaters, or classical sculptors about the build-a-bear workshop.

Either way, I'm fixated on it, and you still won't catch me dead doing barspinz.

SHRED-WELL from Mike Schmitt on Vimeo.

Chris Akrigg THE MAURICE.0 from chris akrigg on Vimeo.