Matt's Bike Thoughts

 I purchased a pair of Arkel Orca 45 and an Arkel Signature V commuter pannier, and have used them for commuting and grocery runs. No touring, unfortunately. tl;dr: Arkel panniers are amazing. The quality is incredible. However, I don't like the panniers that I got for design reasons. So let's get into what I don't like and what other Arkel options are better. Signature V The Signature V is fantastic. Shoulder strap is a little narrow, but comfortable. The laptop pouch is great for a larger laptop. The orange color looks great. It works very nicely as a shopping bag. Arkel's cam attachment system is awesome. The biggest downside is that the pannier does not attach at the bottom of the rack. This means that it'll swing out on any bumps or impacts, and then will swing back onto the rack. This is a decent amount of jostling and force that your gear will go through. It's an expensive option, but made in Canada and with great features and looks. I like it better than...

March was doing so well .  Then I hurt my back on the 29th, likely due to overtraining. Still not in good shape. yet. You can see on the charts how that's affecting my performance and weight. Turns out, I eat a lot of food and drink beer when I'm injured. Progress up until that point was good, at least. Pretty happy with this. Started March with a fitness/fatigue of 84/101 and ending it with a 101/95. Except I hurt my back, and now I can't train, and a week later I'm at 89/44.  April is starting off pretty bad because of my back, and I'm hoping it'll be back up to strength this week. It's been over a week and the pain is definitely better, but not great. It's a bit difficult to make predictions with this injury, so, let's try this out: Last: 2020-03-01 Weight: 191.51 Fitness: 86 This: 2020-04-01 Weight: 190.3 (+4lb from high-end of goal) Fitness: 101 (+1 from high end of goal) Next: 2020-05-01 Weight: 184-186 F...

jeez, just 15 more progress reports until I'm gonna be doing the Tour Divide!!! This month was a wash. I got sick in early February and that totally fucked everything up. You can see my last ride almost. I had a really hard time recovering from it. I did the Frisco Freeze fat bike race anyway, and it was fine. I did dead last by quite a bit for my category, but oh well. I managed to keep my weight mostly in check this month despite not cycling much. Made some good progress recently, but undid it with a pizza/beer bike  tour in Denver. I don't feel bad about missing my goals. Illnesses suck and are unavoidable sometimes. Prediction for February was to end with a weight between 187-190 and fitness between 100-105. My 7 day trendline is at 191.51. That's close enough. Fitness at 86 isn't a huge setback, and I'll get back up there. Alright, so let's chart out prediction: Last: 2020-01-26 Weight: 195.22 Fitness: 105 This: 2020-03-01 Weight: 1...

I'm making progress, but it's not really the sort of progress I'd like to be making. So let's start with what's going worst: weight. Last month, I gave a conservative goal of 194lb for Feb 1. That's actually not too far off from happening - I'm at ~195.2lbs according to spreadsheet on January 26th. This isn't my stretch goal, but that's okay. The failure mode for the last half of the month was eating a lot of food to prepare for a ride, and then not actually doing the ride. Oops. Finally, the third weekend in a row, I ate a bunch of food and then did 90 miles the next day, 'earning' it. So, lesson for next month: don't eat extra to prepare for rides! I am not training for performance just yet. I am training endurance and mental fortitude. I can have a little feasting as a treat, but only after a ride, and even then I can't be too greedy. Estimating 2lbs per week, I will optimistically be at 187lbs next month. If I go conser...

I recently wrote about  Pogies for the Comfort Oriented , which detailed how well the Cobrafist and Williwaw pogies would work for Jones bars and bar-ends and Ergon grips. Now, it's time to review them as pogies. Ultimately, they're closely matched. Whichever one works best for you is going to be a matter of personal preference. Features The Cobrafist wins this round. The Cobrafist has a little interior pocket for storing stuff, and it has internal and external zippers for the two vents. The Williwaw has a single vent with an external zipper, and no pockets. There's lots of extra space to put stuff in the Williwaw, but if you unzip the vent, it can fall out pretty easily. I wouldn't want to do anything rough or bumpy with snacks in the unzipped pogies. Weight As you might imagine, the less featureful Williwaw wins this one. The Williwaw pair weighs 480g with the Cobrafist at 680g. Are those features worth 200g to you? Visibility The Revelate wins here....

There's a lot of talk about pogies and their relative merits, but there's unfortunately not much discussion about pogies and compatibility. Pogie manufacturers assume you'll be running standard mountain bike gear - flat bars and regular ol' grips. Unfortunately, my girlfriend and I are running slightly off-kilter gear. She's got Jones Loop bars on her fat bike, and I've got Ergon GP-3 grips with bar ends (and, uh, aerobars). Are they compatible? Who knows! So I decided to try stuff out and see. I'm going to try out the 45NRTH Cobrafist and Revelate Williwaw pogies on both bikes and report how things work out. Jones Bars Jones bars are going to be tricky for pogies because the cross bar attachment interferes with the closure of a standard pogie. I got both on the bike OK, but there's some usability concerns. Jones bars with Cobrafist on the left, Revelate on the right Cobrajones The Cobrafist and the Jones bars don't really play well...

Bike geometry is important for fit and handling. Fitting a bike is a process of measurement and trial-and-error, but once you have a bike that fits, you should be able to replicate that fit to a new bike. Every aspect of a bike's geometry affects the fit. The frame has a Reach and Stack measurement, which are the horizontal and vertical distance between the bottom bracket center and the steerer tube center. These are important for figuring out if a bike can  fit, but other variables come into play for dialing in a precise fit with stem and handlebar concerns. The total reach on a bike is the horizontal distance between the saddle and the grip point. The total stack on a bike is the vertical distance between the saddle and the grip point. The frame stack/reach does not factor in the seat tube, stem, or handlebars, which obviously contribute greatly to the bicycle. In order to determine the contribution of these factors to the total reach and stack, we need to perform a bit of hi...