The Noble Sport of Road Racing

The thing that makes amateur road racing interesting is the money. The cash prize is what brings out the best and worst in athletes. Strong riders might risk an ambitious solo breakaway in the hope of stealing a victory while a lazy sprinter might agree to pay off a portion of their prizemoney to somebody else in the field willing to help bring back an escape and set up a bunch sprint. Becoming a strong, fast and clever rider is one way to maximise your chances of winning lots of prizemoney – and it is the hard way. The other way is known as ‘sandbagging’. Let me paint you a picture…

A Year of Mountain Bike Stage Racing (...or Camping)

I quit my job in the middle of 2011 and put my savings to use in a way that would make most financial advisors squirm uncomfortably…I spent a year (and most of my retirement nest egg) travelling and racing multi-day mountain bike stage races in different parts of the world.
What started off as a modest 2 month trip to the Mongolia Bike Challenge and Tour de Timor soon evolved in to something more, until a year (and a bit) later my race calendar looked something like this:

What The Bike Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

A friend – let’s call him Tim McGrath for the sake of this post – arrived for a road training ride one Saturday morning on a bike adorned with a peculiar mix of componentry. Tim had discovered the previous night that his regular rear wheel had lost a spoke and was unrideable. At such late notice, he had to improvise with whatever spare parts he could scavenge together – and the result was quite extraordinary.

Faith and Mountain Biking

On this eve of the Jewish sabbath, I present an article (1st published last year) regarding mountain bike riding and the laws of Shabbat...

If you are a good Jew then you know that it’s forbidden to ride on the Shabbos – the day of rest. Basically, the Shabbos or Shabbat, symbolises God’s RDO after 6 days of hard work on the construction site of the entire world. So nowadays Jews celebrate this with a day off on Saturday. No work, no play, no chores – just a bit of prayer and peaceful contemplation.

Bike Review: Testing The Home Ground Advantage

It’s not often that you get to test ride a bike on the actual terrain where it was born. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I got a rare opportunity to do just that…

Oh Canada

It was very exciting to visit Canada recently – I travelled there with Maj (you can find out about Maj here) to compete in the BC Bike Race, which is billed as “The Ultimate Singletrack experience”. But while riding in one of the world’s premiere mountain bike destinations was definitely going to be special, I was actually more excited about heading to ‘North America’ for the basketball. What?