Bicycle Styles recipes
Top Tips for Road Racing
Road racing is one of the most popular forms of bicycling out there. The modern bike industry has road racing to thank not only for it’s current popularity but also it’s existence as a whole. Without the attention, development and money that has flowed into road racing many other bike companies and disciplines may not have been able to reach the heights they have.
Organized road races have run for almost one hundred and fifty years wtih famous races like the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix, Milan – San remo and Giro di Lombardia have captured the world’s attention. Riders like Greg LeMond, Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong, Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali and many other personalities have brought a “super star” quality to the sport, helping it’s popularity even more. Without the technical developments and innovations made for road races, most other types of road bikes may not have even been possible. The use of materials and techniques and fabrication methods like carbon fiber, 3D modeling, wind tunnel testing and TIG welding have all stemmed from road racers trying to get the best possible bikes out there.
Choosing the Best Road Bike For You
While the term road bike can be used to describe any bicycle that is used on paved surfaces, it is most commonly used to describe cycles specifically designed for racing or traveling at fast speeds on paved surfaces. Road bikes are lightweight, aerodynamic and designed with only speed and efficiency in mind.
If you’re looking for a bike to cruise around on and take leisurely rides on the weekend, then you’re barking up the wrong tree. Road bikes are built for speed not comfort. You’re going to be bent over to achieve the best aerodynamic stance possible and after a long ride you’re not going to be feeling great. While modern design techniques and bike geometries try to address the comfort issue, if you want to win or go as fast as possible you’re going to need that stance.
What to Look for When Buying a Recumbent Bike
Once something you would stop and stare at, recumbent bikes are quickly becoming more popular amongst the biking community. A recumbent bike is a cycle where the rider sits in a laid back reclining position, with the pedals in front of them.
Many riders ride recumbent bikes because they are much more comfortable that regular bikes. The body’s weight is more evenly distributed over a larger area. Instead of all your weight being on your hands, feet and sitting area, your weight is supported by your entire back and bottom.
While it may not look like it at first glance, recumbent bikes are very fast. Their design is aerodynamically superior to traditional bikes. In the recumbent position there is less of a frontal profile to create drag, allowing for less resistance and more speed. In fact, a recumbent bike actually holds the world speed record for a bicycle. In 1934, this variation of bike was banned from international racing due to having such a big aerodynamic advantage.
Racing Principles – Basics and Tactics
While we often think of racing as being a purely physical endeavor, there is a huge amount of the sport that is mental.
We have all seen the insane amount of calories professional racers have to consume to have enough energy to maintain their endurance and power throughout a long race, whether they are racing on road bikes or mountain bikes. The training and physical feats of champion level racers like Lance Armstrong are often promoted, studied and turned into the stuff of legends.
However, even in the most physical and brutal sports out there, there are huge amounts of mental energy and strategy that must be put into making a winner. Think about football, rugby or even mixed martial arts. All the strength and power in the world is going to do you no good if you don’t know the best tactics and strategies to implement and when to use them.
Finding the Best Mountain Bike
Mountain bike is a very wide umbrella term that applies to a wide variety of bikes. By far one of the most popular styles of bikes, mountain bikes are built to be durable and take the abuse of off road riding without leaving the rider battered and bruised. These bikes have to be able to handle large obstacles like logs, rocks and debris, while also being fast and easy to control while going down fast mountain trails.
Everything You Need to Know About Hybrid Bikes
With so many different riding disciplines, race types and different competitions in the bike world, the industry has developed many highly specialized bikes to meet the needs of a wide variety of riders. If you’re all about speed and performance on the pavement, you buy a road bike. But if you’re all about tearing it up off road, then you need a mountain bike’s heavy-duty suspension, strong frame and bigger tyres.
The only problem with these specifically designed bikes is that if you need to do any other sort of riding, you’re pretty much out of luck. That is why over the last decade or so, the bike industry has reversed over a hundred years of making bikes more activity specific and started making rides that can accommodate a variety of riding situations. Hybrid bikes are the outcome of this process and they combine the best of both worlds.
The hybrid bike takes the best of the mountain bike set up and the best of the road bike set up and combines them into one convenient package.
Flat Bar Road Bikes – All You Need to Know
Along with the hybrid bike, the flat bar road bikes are one of the latest evolutions in the biking industry. There are more than six billion people on this planet and apparently they enjoy a wide variety of biking activities. Not content with dealing with current bike models that don’t completely meet their needs, many biking enthusiasts, designers, engineers and companies have pushed for the development of sub categories of bikes like the flat bar road bike.
The flat bar road bike is like a hybrid bike in many ways. They are both combinations of mountain and road bike designs, engineering and technology. Hybrid bikes are more mountain bike than road bike, while flat bar road bikes are more road than mountain bike. The place where the flat bar road bike misses out in the minds of many bike lovers is that while the hybrid can go both off road and on road, the subject of this page can only ride on pavement.
Going Green – Electric Bikes
As the world’s population grows and the roadways become more crowded, electric bikes are becoming increasingly popular. While electric bike designs have been around in one form or another since 1890, they only started seeing rapid worldwide growth in 1998. There are an estimated 120 million of these bikes in China alone! European sales are projected to exceed 1 million and the United States’ sales are looking like they will double year over year. There is one thing for sure – electric bikes are here to stay!
History of the Cruiser Bike
It’s pretty clear from the name; cruiser style bikes are all about laid back comfortable riding. Often referred to as beach cruisers, these bikes are designed to maximize comfort and easy riding over efficiency and performance.
Cruisers commonly have balloon tyres, a comfortable upright seating posture and simple steel frame construction. They often come as single speed bikes, can sometimes be found with three or even twenty-one speed drive trains. These multi-speed bikes are noted for their durability and heavy weight as well. While other styles of bikes are constantly getting lighter, faster and made with a plethora of super high tech materials and high-end components, cruisers have maintained the same basic construction for the better part of a century.
Everything You Need to Know About BMX Bikes
Unlike road and Mountain Bikes, BMX bikes have evolved from garage made creations for a small racing niche into a huge industry and one of the biggest markets in cycling today. BMX bikes are built for fun and are so versatile there is almost no end to what can be done on them. The thrills you get from riding combined with the huge amount of exposure from events such as the X-Games and countless other competitions and races all around the world, make this one of the most popular styles of bicycling today.
BMX, or bicycle motocross, originated during the early 1970’s in Southern California. Kids started racing their bikes on dirt racetracks to imitate their favorite motorcycle racers. Most bikes were simple mass produced bikes that had been altered in garages or by small shops in the scene. With the release of the documentary On Any Sunday in 1972 the trend exploded in popularity all around the country. As the sport became more popular, riders soon found they could ride outside of the track and that they weren’t limited just to the dirt. Freestyle BMX, a popular discipline of the sport, where tricks and big air is the goal, exploded in the 1980’s and now rivals the original form of BMX racing in popularity and sales. Another faction of the sport to emerged focused on big air off jumps. Jump BMX bikes spun off from freestyle BMX and has a huge following today. The sport and industry was promoted with the help of very talented and individualistic athletes that showed the world what was possible on these simple one-geared bikes. Names like Dave Mirra, Matt Spinner, Matt Hoffman, Ryan Nyquist and Bob Haro can be found not only on BMX bikes but video games, clothing lines and a slew of other products and promotions.