The Paceline Cycling Podcast

On this week’s show, my guest is writer and editor Peter Flax. Flax was features editor for the Hollywood Reporter. Flax is also a contributor to CyclingTips where he writes on a wide range of cycling culture topics. He is probably best known to cyclists as the former editor in chief of Bicycling Magazine. I was interested to talk to Flax because he straddles both the world of the writer and the w...

Let's talk about dressing for cold weather riding. How important is humidity in how you dress? Should 45 degree weather result in the same kit selection regardless of where you live? Maybe not. Selene digs into this with a funny story about some recent transplants who are struggling to adjust. Patrick is headed to Taiwan. He's going to be riding from the northern tip to the southern tip and encoun...

So just what is gravel? What should a gravel ride be? Should it include singletrack? Should there be creek crossings? What is reasonable for a person to expect when they sign up for an event and just what should a promoter be obligated to communicate to attendees? Selene has events like Iron Cross on her mind. Do you huck? Are you rad? Patrick has set a personal goal to improve his mountain biking...

Rebecca Rusch has what may be the ultimate nickname not just for a cyclist, but for any endurance athlete. She’s known as the Queen of Pain. And she has more than earned that nickname. She has won the Leadville 100 four times. She set the record for the Kokopelli Trail, and has seven world championships to her name, not to mention being the first woman to climb the 5.11c Bermuda Dunes route up El...

For pro teams, finding sponsors and keeping said sponsors happy is more difficult than ever before. This week Selene takes a look at the new strategy from EF Education First-Drapac-Rapha. They have announced that they will be taking on some events that aren't part of the World Tour, which means we may see some pink kits at events like Dirty Kanza and the Red Hook Criterium. This could get cool.  A...

Have you ever ridden across the country? It is one of those things that many of us have considered, and most of us haven't found either the time or the motivation to do it. Selene encountered a vet named Sarah Lee who rode from the East Coast to the Golden Gate Bridge. We have a short clip from the interview and she talks about what she encountered on her trip. Stay tuned for an episode of Tandem...

Everesting. It's a thing now, as we say. And Selene is a bit obsessed with the idea of doing one. Then she ran across a group that went to Everest Everest. How meta. How quintessential. How unbeatable. Patrick is back from Interbike and is afraid grandma might not be coming home from the hospital. She's ornery and won't take her meds. The misses for the show this year seem to outnumber the success...

On this week’s show, my guest is Mike Ferrentino. In the early 1990s Ferrentino rose to national prominence with the launch of Bike Magazine and his column the Grimy Handshake. Since then, Ferrentino has gone on to help found the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship and directed marketing for Santa Cruz Bicycles. These days he’s in PR with Uncommon Communications, but he’s still dedicated to advocacy i...

Selene has a dilemma. She lives in a town with amazing riding culture and plenty of people to ride with. However. (There's always a however, isn't there?) Her favorite riding buddy is injured. He hurt his ankle and is off the bike. And now she's discovered that she, like so many of her readers, is having trouble with motivation to ride. Maybe time for some of her own medicine? Interbike is next we...

On this week’s show, we continue our conversation with Erik Noren of Peacock Groove. Last week we talked about some of Noren’s signature creations like his Evil Dead bike and his Appetite for Destruction bike. While those works generated some controversy, much of this week’s show will focus on a bike that has been widely acclaimed for its incredible attention to detail. That bike is his collaborat...

Forget 'cross is coming. 'Cross is here. Last weekend, Labor Day Weekend for crying out loud, the first big race of the season was held in Delaware—Granogue. And yet, it was hotter than than the seat in a Congressional hearing. Considering cyclocross was invented as a winter sport to keep bloodflow to the feet, what is a person to do with such intense racing in such hot conditions? Selene ponders...

Among the many builders I’ve interviewed in my career, I can say that Erik Noren is truly unique. In a room full of unusual cats, he still manages to stand alone. This episode, and the next, because honestly, the conversation was that long and too interesting to chop into a half hour, are going to be unlike anything I’ve produced previously. Part of that is Noren’s fairly colorful use of language....

Selene is away at Rebecca's Private Idaho, competing in the event's new stage race that runs from August 30 to September 2. So rather than our usual show, we're taking the opportunity to give you the full interview that she recorded with Hanna Grant, chef and author of Eat. Race Win. Selene discusses with Grant what it is we get wrong in feeding ourselves to achieve our best performances on the bi...

On this week’s show we remember frame builder Dario Pegoretti who died last week at the age of 62. Pegoretti rose to prominence in the 1990s as a contract builder who provided custom frames for professional racers painted to look like the sponsor’s bike. He was so respected he built frames for the likes of Miguel Indurain, Marco Pantani and Mario Cipollini. I spoke to three men who knew him: Don W...

How neat a home do you keep? Do you do it all—cook, clean, ride 12 hours a week and write poetry before bed? As it turns out, we don't either. This week Selene takes on the notion of doing it all, of having the clean house, the home repairs repaired, the laundry laundered and the structured training time to podium at all the races. Sanity prevails. With all the talk about power meters and how it i...

The emergence of Allied Cycle Works, is notable as much for the quality of the carbon fiber bicycles they make as where they make them. At a time when all of the major bike makers produce their carbon fiber bikes in Asia, Allied has gained distinction for producing carbon fiber frames in its facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. That's reason enough to pay attention to them, but the fact that they ar...

How do you eat? This isn't a question about whether or not you chew, but what do you fuel with? Selene talked to Hannah Grant, the author of Eat. Race. Win. a book all about fueling for cyclists, and for that matter, endurance athletes. We excerpt a piece of her interview, the entirety of which will run in an episode of Paceline Tandem shortly. Listeners who want to get a 20 percent discount on an...

Few people can claim to be as inextricably linked with the birth of mountain biking as Gary Fisher. His company MountainBikes produced what were arguably the very first production mountain bikes, before he went on to found Gary Fisher Bikes, which he later sold to Trek. Though Trek has stopped producing bikes under the Fisher name, they have retained him as an advocate and expert, a wise move give...

Selene has a dilemma: Some people don't much like cyclists. What to do? You're riding on a bike path where pedestrians and cyclists need to coexist, hopefully peacefully, but you need to pass. Do you ring a bell? Do you call, "On your left"? Do you fly by them at Mach 16? Or do you ride off the path and 40 feet into the weeds? Every answer seems to have its drawbacks. Last weekend Patrick rode the...

In Part II of my conversation with Mark DiNucci, we discuss some of the work he has done as an engineer working on contract for other manufacturers, like SAPA and Evil. We go into greater depth about his building today, including the tubeset and lugset he designed for his bikes, right down to the CAD files. We also discuss a few of his sources of inspiration and builders he admires.

If you wanted to find the American who made the most profound impact on the ride of steel road bikes in the last 30 years, it would be hard to find a person more influential than Mark DiNucci. As an engineer for Specialized Bicycle Components, he was instrumental in creating the steel Allez which went on to be one of the most coveted racing bikes in the 1980s and '90s. He not only designed the bik...

Our man Patrick fell down this past weekend while on a mountain bike ride. Slid out and has the road rash souvenir. As crashes go, it's a minor one, but it has encouraged a bit of reflection. How should one consider the consequences of crashing? And how should consideration of those consequences influence the choices you make if you want to continue to grow as a rider? Selene checked out the Cross...

This week Selene poses an interesting question: How much riding do you need each week to be healthy both mentally and physically? Researchers at the University of Sydney published a study tracking 1500 healthy adults over the age of 49 for 10 years to find out what the optimal amount of exercise was. What they found was surprising, and at least for some of us, pretty gratifying. Patrick has a ques...

On this week’s show, my guest is Nick Legan, the author of Gravel Cycling, from VeloPress. Legan has one of the more varied backgrounds I’ve encountered in cycling. He began his career as a race mechanic, first working for Slipstream Sports and then working for Lance Armstrong’s Radio Shack team. He founded a bike shop in Boulder, Colorado, called the Service Course, but wasn’t content to restrict...

This week we take a look at the women and racing. There are some high points worth celebrating—Trek has created a new women's pro team—and a whole lot of low lights, like podium girls. Selene and Patrick take a look at some of the criticisms of women's racing as well as some of the realities and, honestly, advantages. And yes, Patrick did fulfill his promise to watch a stage of the Tour de France...