Thursday 29 January 2015

Strava - new world for marketing?


A few days ago I saw something interesting on biggest Swedish MTB forum. People put Strava bar in their signature. Shows how many trails you rode, how many KOMs bladi bla. That act of self elevation already hit me hard, but after quick browsing I saw that one person goes one step further... He has put a logo and link to the website of his sponsor under the bar. It made me wonder... Many people are into Enduro Racing by logging into Strava via Facebook. What if you have a sponsor, and when you KOM, you could add his logo and tag to it, so that all of your friends can easily see what theoretically made you so fast? Sure you can already specify what you ride, but I think logos would make it more visible. Then Strava could gather that information from all profiles and you could ask it to show all trails in your area or in the whole world where people KOMed, for instance, on a Cannondale or on ENVE wheels. You could have a ranking which bike or suspension maker is the most successful. That would transform the world a bit I think, it would add another dimension to the game of "which stuff should I buy", ruled by tests, reviews and most importantly results of top athletes, isn't it?

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Bike setup with a bit of salt


This is about mental approach to preparation for riding. I have sensed this weird feature of my brain since some time, but it has never manifested itself so vividly as last time on my way to work - about it later. I spend by average 20 minutes to prepare my bike for a ride, oiling the chain, checking tyre pressure, shock pressure, eventually switching pedals, occasionally tyres. I try to do it a day before so that I don't get frustrated by some unexpected problem (like brakes or dropper post needing bleeding) and don't go into the ride with bad mood, trying hard to relax for half of an hour or so. I have two bikes, both totally rideable on my trails and I am not always sure which one to take, so that makes things a bit more complicated. Then I have my favorite set of clothes I dress into and things I take into the back pack, tools, energy bars, fluids. Then I was always trying to eat pre-ride food and warm up.

Monday 5 January 2015

That grinds my gears: 148x12mm

Yet another new standard: 148x12 axles from Sram and Trek. People talk of planned obsolescence marketing bullcrap, and there may be a bit of truth in it, but well what can we do about that? First off let's just bury the word "standard", let's give it a nice flashy funeral in our heads - drink a beer in the name of that word, here's to you standard - you sounded non creative anyways. That will ease some irritation, let's just call those things axles, spacings, diameters.