5 Recommendations for September from Editor-in-Chief Bill Strickland
Even though I believe that energy, recovery, and hydration-optimization powders help people ride better (and feel better while they're riding better), I almost never mix them into my bottles. I like water. (As sales guy Steve Brawley enjoys pointing out, I also listen to vinyl.) When I make an exception—on days that I know will be ridiculously hot, hard, long, or some combination of all three—I go with GQ-6 Flooid, which tastes lighter than other concoctions, doesn't leave a coating on my mouth and teeth, and feels less heavy in my stomach. Favorite flavor: Green Apple.
Some do the ride even though they can't do the ride, and eventually they can do the ride. Some never do the ride, and can never do the ride.
I got sort of embarrassing-level excited when SRAM shared plans to bring its one-chainring, wide-range-cassette drivetrain to road bikes—there aren't many technological changes anymore that actually simplify the bicycle. We got early versions of the road-specific system and tested its capability and suitability for crit racing, adventure rides, and just generally pedaling around. Read our take on the SRAM road 1x system here. According to SRAM, at least 35 brands will offer 2016 bikes with Force 1 or Rival 1 drivetrains. Expect many of these to be adventure bikes—based on our tests and our read of the cycling zeitgeist, 1x drivetrains will fuel the already fast-growing popularity of stringing together a ride made of pavement, dirt, gravel, grass, and whatever you happen to run into (or using the same bike for separate rides on those surfaces). Though we couldn't test it for this roundup, of all the forthcoming 1x models we know about, the Cannondale Slate is among the most emblematic of the trend. It's not a road bike, not a mountain bike, not a cyclocross bike, and not one of the overcompromised "hybrids" of old. It's a bike. It has a lightweight aluminum frame, a 30mm-travel Lefty suspension fork, and 650b wheels with 42mm-wide tires (which results in the same rolling diameter as the standard road-bike wheel size of 700c). Built with SRAM's Force 1 group and a wide-range, 10-42 cassette, the Slate will be $4,260.
My setup for the Ciclostorica Emilio de Marchi, one of those homage rides to vintage equipment and apparel, this one held in Conegliano, Italy, was an '80s steel Chesini with an '83 Campagnolo 50th Anniversary Groupset, the one inlaid with 22-karat-gold logos, and which I'd never seen outside of paranoiacally preserved collectors' vaults. But it was the riders well past their 50s who made the 90K unforgettable for me, with their movements in the pack and their pedal strokes smoothed to the most essential and most beautiful, and their awareness of the rest of us and the road and the next thing that would happen so natural and so complete that being there with them felt something like being at once humored, and encouraged, and appreciated, in part, for still having so far to go.
Those old riders, they also seemed somehow younger than me in spirit. Still don't know why, but hanging with them reminded me of how, as a kid, I never thought of myself as going out for a ride, or even being on a ride. I was just riding, whenever I wanted and as much or as little as I wanted, and the only reward was the action itself.
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