The Paceline Cycling Podcast

This week we begin with a reader question regarding max heart rate. Will that "220 minus your age" formula accurately predict your max? And if not, does it matter? And if it matters and it's not accurate, what should you be using instead? Selene talks max heart rate and the value of heart rate monitors. Patrick is back from Emporia, Kansas, and talks about his experience there, including not achie...

This week Selene admits that she's been taking a fresh approach to some of the events she's doing. And it's not some new training regiment guaranteed to make you kick butt. Instead, she's decided just to wing it. With Dirty Kanza just a few days away, Patrick is in the midst of packing. He takes a walk through of everything he is packing and just how his bike is set up. Every once in a while, it's...

It's been said that predicting a bad future is a way to set a negative intention. Last week Selene suggested she might not be 100 percent ready for the Keystone Offroad. It might not have been her most successful day ever. But clearly, she's had worse days, right? She had to. Right? This week Patrick has some big news, but rather than dwell on the personal, the conversation pivots to lessons that...

My guest this week is Santa Cruz-based builder Paul Sadoff of Rock Lobster Cycles. I first encountered Rock Lobsters in the late 1980s when mountain biking was exploding. It was only later that I learned just how accomplished Sadoff was in building road bikes and especially cyclocross bikes. He is one of those rare builders, like Richard Sachs, who sponsors a team and can be found at cyclocross ra...

Selene isn't ready. In a good quarter of a century she says she's not quite ready for this coming weekend's race. Yeah, we had the same reaction. After all, if Selene isn't ready, who is? But that's her central issue for this week's show: preparation. She delineates between fun suffering and un-fun suffering. But more specifically, she's looking at packing for events. Patrick entertains a reader q...

This week we shake things up a bit and Selene takes the reins of the show. Patrick talks about his longest ever day, mileage-wise, on the bike. Selene recently reported on a new study on personality and exercise. And if you think that cycling is the domain of lone-wolf introverts, you'd be ... wrong. Yep, sports like cycling and cross fit are just as likely to attract extroverts as team sports lik...

This week, I’m devoting the show to frame builder Roland Della Santa who passed away last weekend at the age of 72. Della Santa is most famous for helping to launch Greg LeMond into bike racing; one of the earliest shots of LeMond winning a bike race is of him wearing a Della Santa jersey astride one of the builder’s bikes. Della Santa was a builder at a crucial time of development for cycling in...

Last weekend, Selene rode the Lu Lacka Wyco Hundo, a 100-mile ride in northeaster Pennsylvania with its share of dirt roads, steep hills and, on this day, plenty of cold weather and rain. Let's just say it was an adventure, but the best part was when she met Paceline listener Bill. God bless Bill. Also, God bless grilled cheese sandwiches and hot soup with coffee (though not in the same bowl). Pat...

In the second part of my interview with Tom Kellogg, we begin with a discussion of geometry for track bikes, and while this subject may not seem super-compelling on its face, it brings in a very interesting discussion of position, weight distribution and handling geometry on the bike. As a result, it's an opportunity to hear Kellogg talk about something on which he is an acknowledged master. One o...

Pennsylvania in spring is a good place to be a cyclist. The landscape glows in technicolor and the events can be unusual with equal doses of nutty, fun and camaraderie. Selene shares some of the unusual events that she does, like the 666 Cinder Race Series. For her, these oddball events are part of the lifeblood of her cycling life. Patrick takes on the Superman vs. Batman question of bike equipme...

This week my guest is Tom Kellogg of Spectrum Cycles. Kellogg’s career in the bike industry spans more than 40 years and includes relationships with brands like Merlin, American Bicycle Group and Time. His bikes have won more dozens of national championships and even world championships, which is why you’ll see the rainbow stripes on each frame carrying the Spectrum logo. I first met Tom in the 19...

Patrick is back from the Sea Otter Classic so we are back on our normal schedule. This week he reports on a new gravel bike, one that happens to be fully suspended, to be released later this year. The Niner MCR offers 40mm of travel in the fork and 50mm of travel in the rear. The potential is pretty interesting. Do you stretch before a ride? Do you do yoga? Selene takes on a reader question about...

This week my guest is frame builder Steve Rex. Back in 1997 I moved to Redondo Beach, Calif., and began doing the local group rides. There was a guy on that ride who wasn’t on a Trek, Specialized or any of the other big brands. He was on a Steve Rex and because he threw a draft like a Mac truck, I was fond of sitting on his wheel. It gave me ample time to study the contours of the frame and the mo...

This week Selene takes on a couple of training questions, and prepares Patrick for some of the hard work he's going to need to do as he gets ready for this year's Dirty Kanza. She discusses the usefulness of group rides and intervals, even for a rider planning to do a double century (whether on the road or off of it). Researchers in Australia released a study regarding the opinions of drivers abou...

No. 22 is a newcomer on the custom bike scene. The company was founded in 2012 by Bryce Gracey and Mike Smith on the idea that titanium just rides better. After working with a couple of different contract shops that produced prototypes for them, they settled on Saratoga Frameworks—the operation that rose from the ashes of Serotta Competition Cycles—for their production. Just one problem: the opera...

We're gratified to report that we've been hearing from listeners who have been getting health issues checked out as a result of Mark Weir and Jess Cera's stories. Selene just did the Hell of Hunterdon and it sounds like she says the first word in the event's name was well-earned. It brought to mind some recent work by training expert Hunter Allen; he has quantified what it means to burn a match. T...

This week my guest is frame builder Nick Crumpton. We may be in the golden age of frame building thanks to the fact that some of the finest steel frames ever produced are being built today. That didn’t stop Nick Crumpton from deciding he wanted to apply his knowledge to carbon fiber. Crumpton is one of a handful of builders who works with carbon fiber. Mostly, it is a material used by much larger...

Before Lance and LeMond, and 7-11 and Motorola, there was a group of cyclists paving the way for American racing on the International level. They were the Raleigh Boys of the 60s and 70s. The Raleigh Boys set the benchmark as the first fully sponsored American Cycling Team competing abroad internationally. My guest this week is one of those “Raleigh Boys:” Bill Humphreys. Bill Humphreys was a hipp...

Chef and racer Jess Cerra is the brain behind one of the newest bars on the market, JoJé Bar. With her knowledge of nutrition, the needs of elite racers and her understanding of food as a chef, she decided to formulate a new bar with less carbohydrate, more fat and no preservatives to address gut rot and other concerns of athletes. She also shares how she got into cycling as well as a touching sto...

The UCI has announced the first-ever eMTB world championships. There will be multiple categories for both men and women and the prize money will be equal. Of course, there are people who think that this should be sanctioned by the American Motorcycle Association, not the Union Cycliste Internationale. And then there are questions about how hard it can be to ride a 55-lb. bike into a rock garden at...

To hear Aaron Barcheck tell it, he wasn't even planning to be a frame builder when he went to UBI to take their titanium frame building class. He definitely wasn't thinking of starting a brand. But after finishing the class and working for Dean Titanium, well, one thing let to another and now Mosaic Cycles is turning 10 years old. Since the launch of Mosaic, Barcheck has built the company from jus...

It may be February and she may live in Pennsylvania, but Selene has started her season with the first of the season's races. It was cold and reasonably wet, but she says all in all, this year's edition was more pleasant than last year's. Patrick takes on another listener question, this time on the placement of pads in bibs and shorts. A listener has a problem with a pair of bibs; the pad is too fa...

In the annals of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show few builders have been as celebrated as Curtis Inglis, the man behind Inglis Cycles and Retrotec. Inglis has taken awards home more than a half dozen times from the show, due in no small part to the artful curves of his Retrotec frames. Inglis is likely also the only builder on the planet to build frames under two different brands. His Ingl...

Again, we take on some listener questions this week (you guys are killing it!). Selene takes a look at night riding and how to get past the fear of not being able to see all that much, even with the addition of lights. She also takes on a question about how to order her post-work workout and eating, while still maintaining a reasonable bedtime. We received an email from a listener who is wrestling...

My history with Brad Devaney goes back more than 30 years to Memphis, Tennessee, when we were both students at the University of Memphis and working as wrenches for the Peddler Bike Shop. Even then, Brad was impressive. His work was as thorough as it was efficient. After I moved away, he went back home to Chattanooga and changed his major to engineering. As fate would have it, he went to work for...