Road cycling

Born from the Streets: Kryptonite’s Diamond Standard U-Lock - The Ultimate Bike SecurityCycling through the city offers unparalleled freedom, but it also comes with the unfortunate reality of bike theft. For years, Kryptonite has been the trusted name in bike security, providing reliable protection for cyclists worldwide. Among their legendary New York Series U-Locks, the Diamond Standard stands out as the pinnacle of security and durability. Whether you're navigating the streets of New York or any urban landscape, this lock is

What Is Handlebar Reach and Why It Matters for Bike FitWhen it comes to dialing in your perfect road bike fit, handlebar reach is often the forgotten piece of the puzzle. You probably already know your bike's frame reach, and you're likely aware of your stem length — but do you know the reach of your handlebars? If not, you could be throwing off your entire fit without even realizing it.

Why is your waterproof no longer shedding water like it once did?Why Your Waterproof Cycling Gear No Longer Sheds Water Like It Used To (And How to Fix It) For many cyclists, a reliable waterproof jacket or pair of rainproof trousers is an essential piece of kit. Whether you’re commuting, touring, or tackling local trails, staying dry can make all the difference between an enjoyable ride and a miserable one. But over time, you might notice that your once-waterproof gear is no longer repelling water as it once did. Instead

How to bleed Shimano Road Brakes with Park Tool.When it comes to educating people on how to fix their bikes, Park Tool are the best in the buisness. Take a look at the video below and follow their step by step guide on how to bleed your Shimano drop bar brakes.  Calvin is using the Park Tool BKM-1.2 - Hydraulic Brake Bleed Kit For Mineral Oil to carry out the procedure with

PRO Empowers Women Racers Through Comfort and Performance with the New PRO Sirin SaddlesAs the primary point of contact between the rider and the bike, the saddle is of utmost importance. It can be a source of discomfort and hinder performance or enable a better all-round cycling experience. For female riders saddle choice has long been limited, especially for those who like to push their limits, race all-out, and chase podium places.  The new

The Truth About Washing Waterproof Garments: Myths vs. RealityA lot of people believe that washing a waterproof garment ruins its ability to keep water out. But that’s not true! The key isn’t avoiding washing altogether—it’s knowing when and how to do it properly. Step 1: Do You Really Need to Wash It?Before tossing your waterproof jacket into the machine, ask yourself: Does it actually need a full wash? If it’s just a bit muddy or has trail spray on it, a simple wipe-down with a damp cloth and

Learn how to look after your bike, Park Tool style

The reason Quad Lock is so popular is because it's one of those things that just works. You install it, it's simple, reliable and looks after your phone. Perfect. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that Quad Lock is so close to perfect that there's no point in messing with it, and that's a point we'd sympathise with.  However, the team behind the brand have indeed been looking for ways to make the best even better, and after much deliberation, creationing and prototyping, they think they've cracked it with the brand new Quad Lock MAG. What is MAG, you ask? Well it's basically a Quad Lock case with a magnetic back, meaning it snaps into various mounts, chargers and holders seamlessly. Not only that but it'll also attach to other magnetic surfaces, like workstands, car doors or the underside of aircraft (please dont try that last one, we haven't thought it through). So instead of using the quarter-turn system to attach your phone to stuff, it just sticks on and off. 

As a bike rider or commuter in winter, there are a few things that just make your heart sink. One is rain, because nothing makes the cold less pleasant quite like getting wet. Another is punctures, because getting cold and wet is one thing but then having to change a tube really is insult on top of injury. The third is getting ready for your ride home only to find that your lights dont have enough charge, thus begins the classic game of 'front light chicken' where they may or may not have enough juice left, so it becomes your legs versus the light battery to see which fails first.  What we're trying to say is that a quality front light is an absolutely essential piece of kit for anyone who intends to ride in poor light conditions, whether that be early morning/late evening rides during Spring and Summer, or basically any time of day in the UK in Autumn or Winter.  Coming in 600, 900 or 1300-lumen varieties, the real beauty of the Blinder Pro is the battery technology

Saracen Levarg - NOT Your Average Gravel Bike.Inspired by Saracen’s Mountain Bike heritage, the Levarg range brings a bit of that trail shredding spirit into the gravel world. Designed for fun and adventure, this gravel beast isn’t just for cruising dirt roads—it’s built to get gnarly when the going gets tough. The Saracen team took the same technical expertise that produced the World Cup-winning

As a sponsor of multiple World Tour road cycling teams, Finish Line knows a thing or two about bike cleaning and lubrication. The company has been at the cutting edge of lubcrication innovation for nearly 40 years, and their first product was the groundbreaking Finish Line Dry Bike Lube with Teflon that changed the game when it came to drivetrain lubcrication. Fast forward nearly 40 years and Finish Line is still at the top of the game, as shown by their latest and greatest product: Halo.  The Halo range has three products: a wax lubricant for improved cleanliness, a wet lubricant for durability and water-resistance and a hot wax melt for ultimate chain lubrication in all conditions. All three are powered by elite-grade ingredients including patented Spherical Tungsten. That Spherical Tungsten is what gives the lube its magic, reducing vibrational friction caused by high-torque pedalling. You wont be suprised to learn that those micron-sized particles are spherical in shape

How to Install Shimano SPD-SL CleatsStep for installing cleats

Let's take a look at the Shimano-sponsored teams, the equipment they will be riding, and the Neutral Service each WorldTour team can count on—not just those riding Shimano—every mile of the way.  Learn more here - https://road.shimano.com/stories/shimanos-24-road-cycling-season     

Five top tips for making sure you’re ready for your next big ride If you fail to prepare, then you should prepare to fail. Okay, that might be a bit extreme in the context of bike riding but the principle does ring true. If you have a big ride or event coming up then the best thing you can do to have a fun and stress-free experience is make sure you have everything you need. There will always be things that happen that are out of your control but if you follow our five tips below, you’ll have the best chance of navigating any mishaps

With the weather finally starting to look up and cyclists everywhere casting furtive glances at their summer bikes, Madison Clothing is back and ready for SS24. This new range puts the focus back on drop-bar riding with the Flux and Roam lines containing pieces for performance and adventure cyclists no matter what their budget.   Heading up the SS24 lineup is the Flux short sleeve road jersey. Focused on performance and made from lightweight material, it’s a smart jersey at a killer price point (£39.99) that pairs up with last season’s Flux EIT bib shorts to make a top performing, wallet-friendly combination. In tandem with that goes the

Correctly tightening different parts of the bike is very important for two sort of corresponding reasons. Firstly, you want to make sure things are tight enough so that they dont work loose while you're riding. The flip side of that is that you also don't want to tighten parts of the bike up too much and end up damaging anything. Basically, there's a fine balance between not tight enough and too tight, and that's where torque wrenches come in.  Torque is a twisting force (technically a measure of the force causing something to rotate round an axis), and it's what you measure when you're tightening any bolts on your bike. You will (or should) have noticed that every bolt on a bike has a torque rating that the manufacturer recommends and it's important to make sure that those bolts are tightened to within that range. For example, Shimano Hollowtech II cranksets have two fixing bolts on the non-drive side, and those are meant to be between 12-14Nm (that's Newton metres). 

Ask any artist and they'll tell you that while creating something great is very hard, following it up is arguably more difficult. There's an entire cultural wasteland of poor second albums and disappointing film sequels that failed to live up to the shadow cast by their predecessors. In a similar vein, Lazer knew that following up its iconic Z1 helmet was going to be a difficult task as the original was so popular among pro and amatuer road riders. But the revamped version - the Z1 Kineticore - honestly not only lives up to the expectation but manages to exceed it, both visually and functionally.  The headline feature of this new Z1 is, as the name suggests, Kineticore. If you're not familiar with Kineticore, it's Lazer's own anti-rotational impact technology, designed to protect your brain from damaging forces during a crash. That's the main benefit - and it's an important one - but the even better thing about Kineticore is that it comes with other benefits that make a helmet

Sitting here in January with the temperature hovering around freezing, it's definitely the hardest part of the year to muster up the motivation to get out and ride your bike. So while we're all waiting for Spring, we've posted a couple of great videos from Shimano's YouTube channel below that just make us want to get out and ride our bikes. You can even watch them while you're on the indoor trainer if you want.  The first video is about riding in and around Beijing on bikes made right there in the Chinese capital. . We'd never really thought of Beijing as a two-wheeled destination before, but after watching the below Made In: Beijing video we're now extremely jealous of the hugely varied terrain that's on offer. So now we're going to have to book a riding holiday there, which will be expensive. Wonderful. 

One of the most interesting (read: frustrating) things about being a cyclist is the stuff you get given for Christmas. There are very few other hobbies where people fixate on giving you things that are not directly related to said hobby but have pictures of the hobby on them. Like socks with bikes on. Or t-shirts with bikes on. Or mugs with bikes on. Basically lots of things that depict cycling but 99% of which are not actually usable in the performance of cycling.  So to cut to the chase, if you want to get the cyclist in your life something nice (really very nice) that will actually aid in the cycling that person does you should absolutely consider the Knog Oi bell. There are multiple reasons for this: first, it's a bell and you be surprised how many people don't have one on their bike. Second, even if they do there is no way it's nicer than this one unless, in fact, they have an Oi already, in which case we're totally out of ideas. Sorry.  There are two types

Riding indoors is a world away from what it used to be. Turbo trainers have changed hugely from what they were just a decade ago, and the advent of things like Zwift means that you can virtually ride with other people in groups, compete in races or simply have something more interactive than just staring at a garage wall or your TV screen for hours on end.  The flip side, of course, is that while things have become significantly smarter and more interesting the price of indoor training has increased proportionally so that if you really want the most comprehensive setup you can then it's going to cost you. What we have here are three potential indoor training setups at various price points and different levels of interest. So whether you just want to keep the pedals turning in the dry or commit fully to indoor training there's something here for you. 

Riding outside all winter is the dream. No matter how good indoor riding gets it just can't compare to the fun you have riding in the real world. That's especially true for off-road riding where  95% of the fun doesn't come from the actual pedalling, but from navigating the terrain.  But to stay outside for as much of Autumn and Winter as possible, you're going to need kit that'll keep you warm and dry. Warm is the easier of the two as that can be achieved through layering but dry require quality kit that actually keeps the water out properly, not stuff that 'keeps water out as long as it's not raining that much and doesn't keep up for more than about 20mins'.  Madison Clothing's DTE collection (which you wont be surprised to find out after reading the headline stands for Defy the Elements) aims to help keep you riding outside for as long as you want. The main pieces - bib trousers, pants and 3-layer waterproof jacket - are serious, heavy duty items of clothing

Call it ambient, atmospheric, ASMR or anything else you fancy, there's no doubt that videos of 'stuff just happening' are very popular right now. Maybe it's because life is so busy that sitting back and watching something relaxing is really fulfilling, or maybe it's just fun to watch interesting things. Probably best not to psychoanalyze it.  No matter what the motivation for watchers, DT Swiss is in on the action with a series of seven short videos that shows how their spokes are produced on the incredible machines in their factory. Each individual video is only around 16secs long, but we just can't stop watching them. They're pretty mesmerising and we've been watching them all morning here, especially the one with the machine that forms the J-bend heads onto the spokes, that's our favourite (video number 5, if you're interested).  DT Swiss is one of the very few wheel manufacturers that make everything in house, from rims to spokes, hub shells, internals - every

Hydraulic disc brakes are one of the best things to have become widespread on bicycles in the last decade. They're powerful, have great feel and require very little maintenance when setup correctly due to being a sealed system. Setting up hydraulic brakes is called bleeding, and it's the process by which you remove air from the system. The reason you need to do this is that air is compressable while hydraulic fluid is pretty much the opposite, so the more air there is in the brake system the more inconsistent and 'spongy' your brakes will feel.  The trouble is, bleeding is often seen as a one-size-fits-all solution to almost any problems you might have with your hydraulic brakes. But in reality there are only certain situations that you need to bleed the brakes, while other symptoms will actually require other remedies (like changing the pads, for example). In the below video Truman and Calvin from Park Tool talk you through 5 things that mean you need a brake bleed and five

If you're building your own bike, one of the nicest parts is figuring out all the little things that will really make the build. Sure, the frame, wheels and groupset are the glamour items, but the smaller bits like bottom bracket, derailleur hanger, thru axles, top cap and seat clamp are the parts that turn a good build into a great one. One brand that's earned an excellent reputation by making just these sorts of things is Wheels Manufacturing (or Wheels MFG) who made their name by making top notch bottom brackets and a huge catalogue of mech hangers to fit almost any bike. Oh, and possibly the best-looking bearing presses that money can buy. That's not all they do, though, and one of their latest creations is a variety of beautifully machined thru axles that will make any bike look that little bit better.  Almost all disc brake frames

There are multiple ways to cope with internal routing. The first way is to buy a bike that doesn't have anything routed internally, which immediately solves the problem but bikes like that are becoming increasingly difficult to find so might be more effort than it's worth. Second is to come up with some kind of home-made fix to get those wires, cables or hoses through the frame. Again, absolutely nothing wrong with this one (and we've done it ourselves in the past) but it generally requires a fair amount of trial and error, and if you need to route a bike more than once a year you're definitely going to want something a little less frustrating. Which brings us onto option three: the Park Tool IR-1.3. The 'IR' in the name stands for internal routing, and the '1.3' signifies that it's the third version of the tool, one with a few very helpful upgrades over the previous (called the IR-1.2 would you believe).  The first new addition for the IR-1.3 is a connector for Shimano's EW-SD300