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Blog Featured March 19, 2020

Fed up with Fitbit

After waiting almost 18 months for Fitbit to turn the SPO2 sensor in my Charge 3, seeing how useless the implementation is, and watching them kill off one of the feature requests I marginally cared about with a tone-deaf response which indicated that they didn’t understand the ask, I’m done. Three Fitbit trackers and five years on the platform, the magic is gone… It’s been building for a while, with many reasons,…

Blog Featured March 18, 2020

One Cleat To Rule Them All

When I bought my first road bike, I briefly considered getting road shoes and pedals, but quite frankly I didn’t see the point. It’s nice to be able to walk in my shoes, not have to carry cleat covers, and now that I have a gravel bike it makes even more sense to have a single, unified, approach to shoes and pedals. Whatever bike I take, it’s the same cleat system, everything…

Blog March 17, 2020

Sampling the bottom

Let me start out by saying that I find the technical content put out by Hambini to be incredibly useful. I’ve also seriously considered getting one of his Shimano bottom brackets (BB) for my Tarmac (but then I got a Specialized Power Crank instead). That said, I do find his presentation style to be a bit abrasive and unnecessarily confrontational. But, clearly it’s working for him; just look at the subscriber count……

Blog March 16, 2020

A Brand Ambassadorship Masterclass: Dynaplug Edition

You can learn a lot about a company by watching how they react to criticism. Do they acknowledge the concern, attempt to dispel the issues raised with facts and data, or do they pull out the “bruh” speak, emoji, and unrelated YouTube videos? Turns out if you’re running Dynaplug’s Twitter account, it’s the second option… Now, it’s quite possible that I’m being paranoid, and over-weighing the risks of fixing a sharp metal…

Blog March 13, 2020

Products I do not understand: Dynaplug Tubeless Repair Kit

Just to be 100% clear, I understand how the Dynaplug kit is supposed to work. And, this post isn’t about whether it works or not; happy to give them the benefit of the doubt here. My issue is with the sharp metal cone-shaped wedge you put inside the tire to make it work. Let’s say best case, you have an aluminum rim, with a nice bit of tubeless tape lining the rim…

Blog March 12, 2020

Where have all the 53 chainrings gone?

I run PRAXIS Works rings on my Specialized Power Crank, and while I’m currently rocking the 50/34 I’ve been considering swapping in a 52/36 for a long time now. That said, I live in Illinois, so I could even get away with a 53-tooth 1x setup with an 11-23 in the back… So when I was at CABDA I took the chance to ask one of their product managers about why they…

Blog March 11, 2020

Warranty Comparison: Cycling Clothing

The topic of clothing warranties came up on a recent group ride coffee stop, and it was really interesting to hear other’s experiences with different OEMs. I have never checked the warranty policy on any item of clothing before purchasing. Ever. But, given the cost of many of these items (it’s pretty easy to drop $200 on a set of bibs), maybe I should be… Pearl Izumi: As you can probably tell…

Blog Featured March 9, 2020

A Plant Biased Diet

About three months ago (early December) I began a “Plant Biased” diet experiment. It came as quite a shock to my family because I like meat, dairy, and eggs. There’s almost nothing I like more than butter braised steak, or an egg, ham, and cheese sandwich (what I used to eat for breakfast most days). But my cholesterol and blood pressure weren’t on great trends, so I thought it would be worth…

Blog March 2, 2020

Train indoors, ride outside

I get that not everyone will agree with me here, but I’ve found that I just can’t do structured training outside. Some of this is based on where I live, but most of it comes down to other factors that introduce variability. Which is bad because it makes the structure, less structured, and much of the value is in the structure. While it’s possible that what limits me doesn’t limit you, but…

Blog February 27, 2020

In Defense Of Disc Brakes

Deep down we all know that disc brakes are technically superior. Now, there are rough edges in the current implementation, certainly for road disc, but that doesn’t change the fundamentals. There are plenty of use cases where rim brakes are just as good, but disc allows you to plan for peak. For e.g. I live in a flat place, but also like to travel to the mountains with my bike. Disc is…

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