Month: March 2019

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At Outside, we’re all about scoring reasonable airfare to cool places that we can sneak off to for the weekend, and we’re definitely not going to hit the rental shop when we get there. You better believe that I’m going to haul our surfboard to Costa Rica and bring our whole quiver for an Alaska ski trip. There’s no need to feel guilty about that, either, because on Alaska Airlines, gear counts as your first bag, and it’s only $25 (same goes for the second bag).

That’s just one of the reasons we (and the Points Guy, among others) love this airline. Here are nine more:

1. A robust flight schedule with lots of destinations that just got even better. After its 2016 acquisition of Virgin America, Alaska Airlines has more nonstop destinations from the West Coast and more West Coast hubs than any other carrier. What’s more, the union will allow Alaska to expand across the country, so now everyone can experience its superiority.
2. Low prices and fees.
3. A mileage rewards program that actually feels rewarding. It gives you a point for every mile you fly, not how much you shell out for your ticket. And if you have the rewards card, you get a free companion pass every year so you can bring your favorite adventure buddy along.
4. The cabins don’t feel like flying buses.
5. The airline treats its people well. Employees are frequently described as “empowered,” which I don’t need to tell you is superior to their counterparts, whose only recourse when shit hits the fan is to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing I can do for you.” Alaska employees have the discretion to do things like waive flight-change fees, offer meal vouchers, or give out free Wi-Fi codes without calling their supervisor.
6. Early boarding for those wearing the jersey of Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (the company’s “chief football officer”).
7. Serves West Coast fare à la chef Tom Douglas and from local companies like Tillamook cheese and Tim’s Cascade chips. It sounds ridiculous, but I know people who choose to fly Alaska just so they can order the famous cheese plate. The last time I flew Alaska, a flight attendant whipped me up a specialty cocktail for no reason at all.
8. Alaska makes me feel at ease, joyful even, when flying. For some inexplicable reason, it makes me want to tag my Instagrams with #IFlyAlaska. Who says that about air travel?All I can say is that when flying other airlines, especially the budget carriers, I go into a travel day essentially bracing to get screwed, rehearsing arguments with customer service before a problem even arises. Flying Alaska feels easy because I know I’m going to be taken care of, especially if something goes awry, and that’s the real dream.
9. But seriously, that cheese plate.

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When Samantha Puc and Alice Lesperance tweeted a few months back to gauge interest in a space to safely discuss experiences of being fat in the outdoors, they didn’t know what to expect—aside from the bullying they were already familiar with as writers and editors exploring that topic. When their tweet went viral and they received hundreds of responses, they knew they needed to do something, Puc says. A few months of editorial planning and a successful Kickstarter campaign later, they’re announcing the launch of Fatventure Mag: a zine featuring work by fat women and non-binary creative people who “love being active, but don’t love toxic weight-loss culture.”

Social influencers like Fat Girls Hiking and Unlikely Hikers inspired Puc to start thinking about the project. At the suggestion of her spouse, she began looking at accounts like those when she felt negative about her body. She wanted to find other people online who were doing things in the outdoors and who looked like her. 

“There’s this whole thing about coming out as fat on the Internet,” she says. “And I know a lot of fat folks who can identify with that—we learn very young how to take photos that are angled so you can’t see our chin or our neck or the chub of our cheeks, or the way our collar bones don’t jut, or our stomachs, or the way our arms are flabby. For a long, long time I felt like I didn’t even see fat people on the Internet—and then these communities started cropping up.”

Seeing communities build up around those social media accounts pushed her to join with Lesperance to create a print publication. The first issue, which they plan to publish in October, will feature personal essays, advice pieces, illustrative work, and interviews with celebrities like yoga teacher and body positivity advocate Jessamyn Stanley.

“I’d really like to open up the conversation,” Puc says. “To say, hey, fat people can exist and live in our bodies and do things that you might not expect them to do and do it just because they like it—not because they’re trying to shed 40 pounds, or whatever it is that people think fat people are going to the gym to do. There’s value in the fact that outdoor spaces are for everyone, not just for one type of person.”

Through the zine, she hopes to create a space for fat-identifying people to find advice about outdoor pursuits from biking to camping. “I’ve had so many people—fat women specifically—come to me and say things like, ‘All the dudes at my local bike shop are really thin and white, and aren’t going to understand how to help me navigate what bike works for my size and body. What do you recommend for me?’”  

But Puc also sees Fatventure Mag as an important read for anybody, regardless of their size, shape, ability or activity level. “One way to really cultivate respect and to open up outdoor and active spaces to others is to just let people be there, let them do their thing. When you’re participating in some sort of physical activity—and this goes for everybody—if you see somebody who doesn’t fit your vision of the kind of person who should be participating in that activity, and you want to open your mouth and you want to judge them for that, consider for a second that they’re there for the same reason you are.”

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How many times have you forgotten to charge your fitness watch the night before a long run, then found yourself stopping on the side of the trail to dim your screen and turn off Bluetooth connectivity in an attempt to eke out just a little more juice? Suunto’s newest watch, the Suunto 9 ($600), has a solution for just such a moment. 

The watch comes with three modes (performance, endurance, and ultra) that adjust various settings to preset levels, including vital battery-saving maneuvers: dimming the screen, reducing the saturation of the color display, turning off touchscreen capabilities, and lowering the frequency of GPS tracking from every second to every 60 or 120 seconds.

Normally, lower GPS-tracking frequency means less accurate GPS tracks. To compensate, the Suunto 9 aggregates the user’s speed and direction of travel to fill in the gaps between satellite pings. This FusedTrack technology is not as accurate as regular once-per-second GPS tracking, but Suunto claims it’s more accurate than the readings runners typically get when they reduce GPS frequency to save power. 

Two runs with the new watch were enough for me to understand it represents an important evolution in sports-watch technology, letting athletes adjust to unexpectedly long days on the trail without entirely sacrificing the detailed GPS tracking that makes these devices relevant in the first place.

The Suunto 9 looks and feels much like Suunto’s Spartan Ultra and Spartan Sport Wrist HR (big and chunky), with much of the same functionality: GLONASS and GPS tracking, altimeter, barometer, and a flurry of sport-specific options like interval timer and heart-rate zone display. But the new battery-life adjustment with FusedTrack puts the Suunto 9 light-years ahead of is predecessors.

Before starting an activity, users can select their preferred battery mode from a menu, which displays the amount of tracking time each mode will yield. Fully charged, the watch can track for 25 (performance), 50 (endurance), or 120 (ultra) hours. In the thriftiest mode, touchscreen, Bluetooth, vibration alerts, and optical heart rate are all shut off; the screen is dimmed to 10 percent and set to go dark after 10 seconds; and GPS is set to update every 120 seconds. 

You can switch modes at any point during a run. If your battery is running low, the watch may even prompt you to do so. Halfway through a morning run, the watch beeped to let me know the battery was at 10 percent and offered more-economical settings to keep the watch alive until I finished. I clicked a single button and it was done. The watch also uses your training history to track what days you typically do long runs, and it reminds you to top off the charge the night before. (I haven’t been using the watch long enough for this feature to kick in.)

As for how well the FusedTrack functions, I have not tested the Suunto 9 on any long, meandering runs (i.e. the kind that require high-frequency GPS pings to produce accurate data), but an out-and-back bike-path run using performance mode in one direction and ultra mode in the other produced distance readings within a few tenths of a mile of each other. That’s pretty good.

This watch, with its top-end sport features and data collection, is most obviously useful for athletes who go out for longer than a single day at a time. But the smart-battery and FusedTrack technologies are relevant far beyond the core endurance realm. They could conceivably be ideal for sailors, hunters, backpackers, travelers, and anyone else who relies on GPS and navigational data during long trips away from regular power access. 

Buy now

We’re not talking pills. It’s all about picking foods that are naturally packed with supplements.

While most people pay attention to their macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, and fat), they often forget about watching their micronutrients—the vitamins and minerals in foods. “Micronutrients are key to supporting energy metabolism, oxygen transfer and delivery, and tissue repair,” says Marni Sumbal, nutritionist and owner of Trimarni Coaching and Nutrition in Greenville, South Carolina.

If your body is a machine, think of micronutrients as the gears—they facilitate the metabolic reactions that help turn food into fuel, says Ingrid Skoog, nutritionist and instructor at Oregon State University’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences. And although all vitamins and minerals are essential to your overall health, a few are especially crucial for athletes. To optimize your performance, focus on these eight, and aim to get them (preferably) through real-food sources rather than supplements.

Iron

What It Does: Iron helps red blood cells carry oxygen to muscles, says Sumbal, which is critical for improved endurance. Research shows that regular endurance training leads to a greater daily loss of iron, making deficiencies common among the highly active. To combat this expedited rapid loss, the Food and Nutrition Board suggests a 30 percent increase in iron intake for people who exercise intensely on a regular basis.

Where to Find It: Oysters, clams, red meat, fish, raisins, tofu, lentils, and white beans are all great sources of iron. Another solid (and cheap) option: A cup of cooked spinach contains about 80 percent of the daily recommended allowance for men and 35 percent for women.

B Vitamins

What They Do: Each B vitamin—including folate, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, B6, B12, pantothenic acid, and biotin—has a role in energy production, but many of them work together for greater impact, says Sumbal. Specifically, they break down carbohydrates into glucose for energy and help process fat and protein. “They’re like a flame to the fire,” she says. Among the B vitamins, B12 stands out for its function in red blood cell production and the synthesis of DNA. Since red blood cells are responsible for removing carbon dioxide from your body and carrying oxygen, it’s especially important that endurance athletes keep their B12 levels high.

Where to Find Them: Chicken, beef, leafy greens, eggs, milk, beans, and whole grains all contain most B vitamins. Animal sources are the best B12 sources, but vegans or vegetarians can also find it in fortified cereals and nutritional yeast.

Vitamin D + Calcium

What They Do: Vitamin D and calcium work hand in hand for bone health. Although calcium on its own will make your bones stronger and work as an anti-inflammatory, it won’t be fully absorbed without the help of vitamin D. Shortage of this vitamin is shockingly common in outdoor athletes, most of whom assume they’re getting enough from sunlight alone. “Especially if you’re a winter sports athlete, you may not be getting the exposure you think you are,” says Skoog.

Where to Find Them: Most dairy products—like cheese, milk, and yogurt—provide a great dose of both calcium and vitamin D. Since vitamin D is best absorbed when paired with fat, opt for a full-fat option rather than a fat-free alternative, says Sumbal. Salmon is another great source of both.

Vitamin C

What It Does: It’s known for fighting off sickness, and for good reason. Vitamin C is a major immunity booster, and research published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise has shown that long-lasting exercise at a moderate intensity decreases immunity. Incorporate a few health-boosting foods into your diet to improve your ability to fight off sickness.

Where to Find It: Load up on foods like broccoli, peppers, kiwi, and oranges. Yellow bell peppers are chock-full of the stuff, with a large pepper containing almost four times the recommended daily allowance for men and fives times that for women.

Magnesium

What It Does: Magnesium plays a role in nerve and muscle function, including how the heart contracts, says Sumbal. It also assists in protein, fat, and carbohydrate synthesis and electrolyte balance. When there is not enough magnesium in the cells, the muscles and nerves can become stressed, causing cramping or restless legs and involuntary spasms, she says.

Where to Find It: To hit the recommended daily allowance of 420 milligrams for men and 320 milligrams for women, aim for a daily mix of deep-green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains.

Potassium + Sodium

What They Do: Potassium is one of the three major electrolytes and works in conjunction with sodium to maintain cells’ membrane potential. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s largely responsible for proper muscle contraction, heart function, and communication between nerves. The two micronutrients also work together to maintain fluid balance in the body. During exercise, you lose electrolytes through sweat, which can lead to fatigue and muscle cramping, but potassium and sodium help restore proper hydration and keep those side effects at bay.

Where to Find Them: Bananas are the usual go-to for a dose of potassium, but a small white potato with the skin on contains almost double the banana’s potassium count. Other good potassium sources include oranges, beans, salmon, and milk. For a quick sodium fix, simply add a dash of table salt your food. Sprinkle a potato with salt for a quick one-two punch after an intense endurance session to rebalance electrolytes.

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In his prime, John Henwood was a world-class runner who, representing New Zealand, made the 2004 Olympic final in the 10,000-meters. Back then, he never thought that he’d still be racing once his fastest years were behind him. He was wrong. At age 45, Henwood is now coaching the New York-based Henwood Hounds running club, and is one of the best Masters athletes on the city’s very competitive racing scene. Last year, for instance, he nearly broke 16 minutes in a hilly 5K in Harlem, winning his age group.
 
Although his top priority is training his athletes, Henwood still enjoys mixing it up in local races. We asked him for a few words of advice for his fellow Masters runners.

It’s no big secret that many runners are motivated by the prospect of getting better and producing faster times. Those who, like Henwood, competed at a very high level in their youth, will obviously have a tough time setting new personal bests in their 40s. But the vast majority of runners are not ex-Olympians. In fact, Henwood says that several Masters runners only discover their potential later in life.
 
“You actually find a lot of the Masters are getting better in their 40s, because they sometimes have more time to themselves than in their 20s and 30s,” Henwood says.
 
“A guy I know, he’s 42 years old and he took three minutes off his half marathon time and ran 70 minutes. I met a girl in the gym who was 47 and I helped her run under three hours for the Boston Marathon—which was a ten-minute PR. A lot of these New Yorkers in their 40s have never been on a decent training plan before and usually have no problem getting a PR. I have athletes on my team who are improving in their 60s.”

Strength training for runners has increasingly become the norm, as prominent elites like Jordan Hasay are known to hit the weights. Henwood says that most of his athletes do strength and cross-training, regardless of their ability level. With the continuous decline in muscle mass that typically sets in around age 40, strength training takes on increased importance as athletes get older.
 
“You take a 70-year-old and give them some strength training and the recruitment of muscle fibers is huge, but they can lose it just as quickly,” Henwood says. “My runners that are around 60 might only run three to four days a week and spend the rest of their training time in the gym.”

Beyond strength training, Henwood’s advice, particularly for older athletes, is not to neglect the gym when it comes to cardio workouts. In particular, he recommends building aerobic fitness on machines other than the treadmill. This approach can be very beneficial for runners who plan to eventually incorporate some more intense interval workouts and threshold runs outside, since it allows them to build up base fitness without hammering out miles on the pavement and risking injury. 
 
“With the Elliptical and the StairMaster you can work really hard to get your heart rate up and you get your lungs in shape before you hit your threshold work outside,” Henwood says. “That will make your threshold work a lot easier. It’s going to hurt no matter what, but it’ll hurt less if you do some more cross-training in advance.”

One inevitable fact of being a Masters athlete is that it can take much longer to get in shape, or, as Henwood puts it, to get your body to “click.” Declining VO2 max levels and muscle mass mean that older runners need to be more patient when it comes to building fitness.
 
That’s why Henwood recommends prioritizing perceived effort during workouts in the early stages of a training cycle, rather than trying to run at a specific pace, or hitting specific splits in interval workouts. Runners should allow themselves to establish a baseline during those first few faster workouts. Save the worrying about your times for later in your training cycle.

Regardless of whether you’re just discovering running in your 60s or if you’re a former world-beater, getting in shape is a transcendent experience. So, embrace it. “There’s nothing better than to run up a hill and, after four or five breaths, you’ve recovered and are running along, talking with your mates. That’s what got me into running in the first place,” says Henwood.

He also says that the most inspiring thing about coaching Masters athletes is the way they continue to be motivated throughout their lives. Apparently, it rubbed off on him. 

“When I was in my twenties, I thought that no way am I going to become one of those slow old people—there’s no way I'm going to keep doing this after being an Olympic athlete,” he says. “And then, suddenly, I was so wrong. I found that I needed to compete against myself. That what keeps me going.”

Either learn to ride difficult passages of singletrack or simply walk them. But please stop ruining the challenges for everyone with cheater stones and shortcuts.

Mike Curiak, a friend of mine who lives in Grand Junction, recently wrote a blog about a Fruita, Colorado-area trail called Moore Fun. Because of the line the trail takes, up and over a high ridge between two low spots, Moore Fun is technical and physical, with slow-speed turns, balancey squeezes, and legitimately scary step-ups and step-downs. Every move is rideable, but the riding is so precise and precarious that you’re as likely to walk any given spot on any given day. That has earned Moore Fun the reputation as one of the most challenging trails in the area, which some love (“Best trail in Loma,” one rider commented on MTBProject.com) and others do not (“More hassle than fun,” wrote another, who described walking long stretches and breaking a pedal).

But Moore Fun’s fearsome reputation is in jeopardy. According to Curiak and other locals, some riders have begun to shortcut corners, stack rocks to diminish drops and steps, and generally find ways to avoid obstacles. “Moore fun is being dumbed down, sanitized,” Curiak explains. “Several of the marquee moves now have go-arounds, or ramps, or have been butchered such that a unique, well-designed, engaging move is now a straight line with zero challenge.” 

Though this might seem like an esoteric conflict between crusty locals in some far-off corner, the debate over Moore Fun typifies a trend I’ve seen in riding centers around the country toward flow trails, shortcuts, and easier lines. The city of Sedona, for instance, has struggled in certain places to keep riders from shortcutting switchbacks and narrowing corners. “I think it’s partly the Strava effect,” Mike Raney, owner of the bike shop Over the Edge Sedona, told me last year when we came upon some cut corners on a drop trail called Brewer. “Some people are chasing KOMs on descents, and the fastest lines will always be the straightest one between two points. But if you do that, you’re not even riding the trail.”

I’ve seen some of that on trails in my hometown of Santa Fe. A couple of years ago, the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) helped with the construction of a flow trail called Hustle and Flow at the La Tierra Trails, our local after-work system. At first, it was a super playful ride, with bermed corners, lots of rollers for pumping, and some small tabletops and doubles. But as more people have ridden it, a side trail pretty much cuts out every feature on Hustle and Flow, meaning you can burn through it without negotiating a single obstacle. Recently, out of curiosity, I rode the new ride-around line and discovered that I could cover the Hustle and Flow in almost 10 percent less time than I ever had. I discarded that track—to me, times on Hustle and Flow should only count if you ride the actual line—but the experience was insightful.

However, it’s not only about speed and Strava. In Santa Fe, we have very few technical trails, and I have long cherished the ones that are here because they allow me to challenge myself. But over the years, even some of the few hard moves we have are diminishing. The one legitimately challenging rock step-up at the base of the Winsor Trail now has a smooth ride-around on the right and a rut behind the rock from side traffic that basically excludes, and in some ways diminishes, the original challenge. A climb up a horrendously steep pitch on the Chamisa trail that once required a combination of power and finesse to negotiate a rock rib right at the crux, is now nothing but an easy pedal up courtesy of all the riders that decided to bypass the rocks. And almost every time I descend Bear Wallow these days, I find that the tricky little series of rock ribs that constitutes the only obstacle in miles of riding is filled with cheater stones to smooth it out. Yes, I stop every time and remove them. But the upshot here, as on Moore Fun, is that riders who maybe don’t have the ability for these technical bits are simply steamrolling them down to their level.

It must stop. Sure, you can ride around, but that ruins it for everyone. This is no different than the climbing debate over chipping back in the early ‘90s, when some rock climbers were creating holds on routes that they deemed otherwise unclimbable. It’s a good thing the practice was shunned because if we’d mowed down all the challenges to the level of that time, when the hardest routes were in the 5.13s, we would have ruined the future for today’s climbers, who are now on the cusp of 5.16. Similarly, when someone stacks cheater stones and creates ride-arounds, they are destroying a resource.

Richard Edwards, an IMBA Trail Solutions Director of Construction and Operations, says a host of variables from terrain and local ethics to the improvements of modern bikes contribute to trails morphing, but the biggest factor is mountain biking’s changing culture. “The very soul of the sport has changed in the last decade. We have made mountain biking appeal to everybody, almost akin to baseball or soccer. That has driven a huge demand for trails that are easy entry and accessible,” Edwards explains. “The challenge becomes how we can build and maintain trails that both serve newcomers but still offer challenges.” On new constructions, IMBA often accomplishes this by building a ride-around line well away from technical obstacles so that both novices and experts alike can enjoy the experience without affecting one another. Edwards stresses that no one should make changes to a trail unless they are the land manager. “Our official position has always been to keep singletrack single,” says Edwards. “The other part of it is, you have to remember not to let your own skill level dictate other peoples’ opportunities.” If you make a line easier, he says, you’re taking away from someone else’s ability to learn and grow and improve as a rider.

That brings us back to Moore Fun, which, truth be told, is a ride for experts and has never had ride-arounds or options—nor should it. “When it was built, we set out to create something that, in terms of sustained technical, was in a class of its own,” says Chris Muhr, the vice president of Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association (COPMOBA) who helped to build Moore Fun two decades ago. “It’s a hard, brutal ride, and it was intended as such. For really good riders and those who don’t mind some punishment, it’s fun. But you have to be good and you have to be in the zone. If you’re not riding well, it’s punishing.” There are many trails in the Fruita network that cater to riders after more flowing, less technical rides, he points out. “We totally understand the need to build for the full range of riders. We approach trail systems like ski resorts, with 10-20 percent green runs, 10-20 percent black runs, and the majority of runs in the blue, intermediate zone,” he says. “But a ski resort doesn’t groom its chutes and cliffs so everyone can ski them. If the chutes are above your skill level, you just go ski elsewhere.”

I rode Moore Fun for the first time shortly after it was built, and though I was on a fully rigid steel bike, and though I wasn’t good enough for half the moves up there, I still loved the challenge and didn’t mind getting off my bike to walk through sections that I couldn’t ride. I’ve ridden Moore Fun a few more times in the years since, and as my ability has improved and my bikes have become more forgiving, I’ve cleared more and more of the obstacles. But I’m nowhere near able to clean the whole thing, a fact that makes me happy. Like the consolation of preserved wilderness, it’s comforting to know that the next time I go to Fruita, there will be a ride waiting to challenge me.

Or at least I hope it will be. Tech trails are vanishing fast, and if we value the challenge we as a community must stand up for it. “It comes to this,” says Mike Curiak, “Elevate yourself to the level of the trail. Don't bring the trail down to your level. Can't ride it? No biggie: walk it this time. Next time, give a few of the moves a try. The time after that, try 'em twice. Eventually, you might put it together.”

And even if you don’t, there’s gratification in the simple act of trying.

From better casings and increased sidewall protection to varied compounds for better grip and new sizes, rubber for the road and the trail is improving

Tires proved the most surprising story of the Outside magazine bike test this year in Tucson, Arizona. In two weeks of testing 50 bikes, with a dozen riders on each bike every day, we had only two flats. To put that in perspective, at the 2017 test, we flatted 18 times, and in 2016 we tallied a whopping 27. Previous tests had at least that many flats, and often more. From the nasty, barbed plant life to the serrated rocks that litter the roads and trails, everything in Tucson is out to shred your tires, which makes our dearth of flats even more impressive.

Because the results stretch across wheel and tire size, bike type, tire and wheel combos, and even brand, the inevitable conclusion is that tire designs as a whole are improving. Even beyond the bike test, I’ve had so few flats on my year-round test fleet that I can hardly remember the last time I changed a tire.

So how do you explain these improvements? “We are finally a few years into tubeless tire development, and we are hitting our stride,” says Clayton Wangbichler, a spokesperson for WTB. “Early on, companies were adapting tube-type tires for tubeless, and it was a learning curve to find out what worked and what didn’t. We’ve moved beyond those days and we are fine-tuning tires with different plies, better casings, and a variety of compounds to suit conditions. Also, rim designs are now built to facilitate tubeless setups.”

Probably the biggest factor contributing to improved durability and feel is sidewall and tread protection, which amounts to some sort of protective layer built into a ply of the tire. “I think we have finally figured what materials work,” says Graham Wilhelm, product manager for Trek’s wheelworks program. “We know specifically what type of nylon, what TPI of nylon, and what weave of nylon works best.” And it varies from tire to tire. For trail and all-mountain designs, for instance, Bontrager uses three sheets of 40TPI nylon, one in each sidewall and one sub-tread. On cross-country tires, there are only two sheets of 60TPI nylon in the sidewalls. “I think you see this across the board: companies have really focused in on what works, so you’re getting tires today that weigh the same as they did five years ago, but they are so much more durable.” Wilhelm also points out that improvements in tread design mean better control, so riders are less likely to flat because they’re riding better lines.

Aaron Chamberlain, at Maxxis, whose tires graced over half the mountain bikes we tried, says they have new technologies as well, including DoubleDown, which uses two plies of casing, like a downhill tire, but with lighter 120TPI casings for better feel. “Bikes are capable and more aggressive, so we have to keep up with that,” he says. He also credits the trend toward wider rims for some of the added durability in tires. “More bikes are coming stock with wider rims. That allows the tire to spread, which reduces the risk of pinch flats.” That echoes the approach Enve took to taming flats when it redesigned its mountain series wheels last fall.

Manufacturers also seem more concerned with durability than weight. “When tubeless came out, it was all about weight, but we’ve come to realize that you can’t always cut weight at the expense of reliability,” says Wangbichler. Whereas a decade ago I strived for lightweight mountain race tires that weighed in the 400-gram range, for instance, these days 500 to 600 grams is more realistic, partly thanks to those thicker casings and wider profiles. You can argue over how much an extra 100 grams slows you down, but there’s no debating that you’ll be a lot slower if you flat thanks to tires that are too lightweight.

Bike companies seem to have gotten this message, too. A few seasons ago, most brands were spec’ing the skinniest, lightest, cheapest version of tires so that their bikes would feel as feathery as possible on the showroom floor. At our tests, we’d shred that paper-thin rubber immediately. So it’s heartening to see that more companies are spec’ing heavier weight tires with additional sidewall protection. Specialized, for instance, includes its GRID tires, which have reinforced sidewalls, on all models of its trail bikes, starting with the Stumpjumper and up. And pretty much every bike in the test that came with Maxxis treads included the company’s burliest 3C/EXO/TR designation for the best tear and puncture resistance. “A lot of manufacturers have realized that spec’ing the lightest tire possible means customers are going to be flatting all the time,” says Chamberlain. “And that just makes everyone look bad.”

Tires are getting wider across the board, too. Most of the road bikes we tested were equipped with 28c tires and many had up to 32c—that’s a far cry from yesteryear’s 23c standards. And whereas 2.1-inch tires and smaller were the norm on cross-country race bikes not long ago, this year the BMC Agonist came with 2.25s, and the Specialized Epic got a 2.3. Increased volume doesn’t necessarily mean better durability, especially since pressures generally drop as sizes go up, but it does translate into a better ride. “I think you can trace it all back to fat bikes,” says Sean Estes, at Specialized. “Riders immediately loved the confidence, the added traction, and the fewer flat tires. You get an incredible ride quality with bigger rubber. The trade-off is weight and rolling resistance, so now the push is to find the sweet spot that balances all the factors.”

Enter the 2.6-inch mountain tire, which was probably the hottest item on deck this year. Six bikes came spec’d with this new size, and I imagine that even more would have except that early run availability has been tight. Splitting the difference between 2.4s, once considered a big mountain bike tire, and 3.0s, the original standard for plus bikes, this size provides tons of traction and push through loose terrain and chunder but doesn’t have the same lethargic sensation you sometimes get with plus. “I think it’s sort of a backlash to plus,” says Chamberlain. “There was all this hype about how plus was going to change your life. It’s good for some things, but can also feel vague and slow. So this is the pendulum swinging back the other direction.”

We had two enduro bikes in the test, the Pivot Mach 6 with a 2.5-inch Maxxis DHF front and the Ibis Mojo HD4 with a 2.6 Maxxis DHF, and hands-down the control and confidence of the bigger rubber won out. As an experiment, I switched the fatter tire onto the Pivot, and I liked that bike even more. The differences were incremental, of course, but noticeable, which probably explains why this size is exploding.  “I was surprised to find out that 2.6 is leading our sales right now,” says Trek’s Wilhelm. “For me, it’s definitely the magic middle.”

One last note: If you aren’t carrying a plug kit, such as the DynaPlug Pill, you are missing out. Whereas flats in the past meant installing a tube and losing your tubeless benefits, we fixed both of our flat tires with a quick plug job. And plugs have gotten so good these days that those fixes lasted the remainder of the test—and are still going strong.

Because your Garmin can’t help you navigate your relationships

By now you’ve probably seen the viral news story about the woman in Turkey who is filing for divorce because of her husband’s “bizarre obsession” with his bicycle: 

"My husband always spends time with his bicycle. He has a different kind of a bond with it," Yağmur Z., who resides in Istanbul, said in her complaint. She added that her husband cleans up and fixes his bicycle in the middle of the living room on a daily basis.

If you’re a cyclist, your response to this was probably, “And that’s bizarre…why?” We’re an anal-retentive bunch, and I’ve heard of people who rinse their bikes in the shower and run their components through the dishwasher. Given this, Burak Z’s behavior barely even registers on the spectrum of Weird Things Cyclists Do. 

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that the world is full of non-cyclists who, quite rightly, find this level of attachment to an inanimate object disturbing.  Furthermore, while we’re great at analyzing our ride metrics, we’re not so good at monitoring our social behavior. So if we’re going to foster and maintain relationships with regular people, it’s important that we learn to recognize when this behavior starts to cross the line. (Obsessing over our ride metrics, for example.)

To that end here are some tips that will help you find love with the normies and live happily ever after. 

Don’t Try to Convert Them

So you’ve convinced a non-cyclist to spend time with you. Congratulations! Somehow you’ve managed to find someone who’s not put off by your passion for grinding away on a bike for hours on end—or, even rarer, someone who actually finds your compulsion endearing.

Warning: one way you’re likely to blow it with non-cyclists is by mistaking their open-mindedness for a desire to become cyclists themselves and then trying too hard to foist your strange lifestyle on them. Want to introduce bikes into a relationship in a fun way? Keep it casual. Suggest taking advantage of the local bike share program and going out on the town. Ride together, not three bike lengths ahead. Refrain at all times from pedal stroke critique. Above all don’t record the ride on Strava!

Want to quickly convince your new friend that cycling is the equivalent of LARPing? Emphasize the need for high-end equipment and full Lycra at all times. And don’t even think about pushing the clipless pedals. Like any other type of fetish gear, if you’re on a date with someone who’s interested in that sort of thing, it’s because you both met on a forum dedicated to it in the first place.

Don’t Keep Your Bikes in Your Living Area

This is perhaps the most basic strategy for curbing your excessive cyclist tendencies, and it’s the one that might have saved Yağmur and Burak’s marriage. Whether you’re cohabitating or merely hosting someone in your own home, keeping your bike where you can see it is like keeping your phone on the table at a restaurant: sooner or later, you’re going to start pawing at it. It starts with “I’m just gonna top up the tires for the ride tomorrow,” then “Netflix and chill” gives way to “repack and degrease,” and before you know it your partner has turned in for the night and you’re up until 1 a.m. cleaning your cassette with a toothbrush.

If the separation anxiety is simply too much to bear, use your phone to take some photos of the bike. At least that way when you gaze at it you can pretend you’re wallowing in depressing current events or the personal lives of celebrities like a normal person. And if you’re a city-dweller who has no choice but to store the bike in your apartment, consider using a series of cables and pulleys to suspend it from the ceiling, or perhaps an electric fence. At the very least keep it somewhere in the apartment with bad light so you’re not tempted to clean it.

Don’t Travel with Your Bike

If all goes well, eventually you’re going to want to take a trip together. For any cyclist, the prospect of a few days away from the bike is a daunting one. Therefore, at some point during the planning, you’re going to float the idea of taking your bike along with you.

Don’t do it.

You know what feels great? That moment when you both arrive all road-weary at your destination, drop your bags, and collapse onto the bed. You know what ruins that moment? When you get right up again, unpack your bike, and start whining about how the TSA crammed your wheels back in the case and now they’re half a millimeter out of true.

Even worse is to plan the trip with a secret cycling agenda. If your non-cycling partner is looking for an early spring getaway to shake off that seasonal affective disorder, don’t push for the chilly, rain-soaked charms of Flanders because you think you may be able to watch a Classic. Sure, the romance of the cobbles is undeniable, but it’s not that kind of romance, and sometimes you’ve got to suck it up and spend a few days lying on the beach.

Search and Replace

Riding makes you happy, and happy people make good partners. However, people who ride to the exclusion of all else are no fun to be around, and if you suspect you may be pushing it, here’s a simple test: before announcing your intentions to your partner, say it to yourself first, but replace the word “ride” or “race” with “drinking binge.”

To wit:

• "Sorry, can’t meet your parents, leaving town next weekend for a two-day drinking binge."
• "Let me know how the movie ends, I’m turning in early tonight. Got that big drinking binge first thing in the morning."
• [Pushing curtain aside]. "Still snowing. I’m gonna go binge drink in the basement for a couple hours."

It’s a fine line between fitness and selfishness, and sometimes a ride hangover is just as debilitating as a regular one.

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I was the queen of flappers—until recently. I’ve been climbing on and off for over six years now and I feel I’m just learning how to take care of my hands properly. The secret of my success (which isn’t a well-kept secret) is filing down my calluses when they protrude too much and applying balm regularly. I haven’t had a flapper in months and I’m no longer ashamed to shake hands. But not all balms are created equal. These are the four I would recommend.

Delightful herby lemon smell; doesn’t absorb too quickly; the bar itself lasts longer than other balms. 

Bar design can be hard to use; thick consistency is not ideal for the workday.

I’ve had this bar for nearly four years, as you can tell by the battered metal case. It is by far my number-one pick for climbing balm. The lemon-herb smell has become quite nostalgic for me, and the lotion bar is the best for really getting into the small cracks in my hands. The balm stays on my hands longer than others I’ve tried and has a thicker consistency, which helps its healing powers but isn’t ideal for workdays. That’s why I mainly use this balm right before bed at night as an ultra-deep moisturizer, or other times when I don’t mind my hands being all greased up. The lotion bar design can be unwieldy to use and I have to give the metal case a good shake to get the bar out in hot temps. Overall, this is the balm I reach for when my hands are in dire shape. 

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Not too oily; small tin; solid consistency.

Off-putting smell; melts easily in hot conditions.

This is the balm I grab during the workday or other situations where I need clean, non-greasy hands. The formula is the least oily of the bunch and settles into the skin quickly without leaving much of a residue. It’s easy to get as much as I need without overloading. But buyer beware: I did leave this balm in my climbing bag on a particularly hot trip in the desert and it melted fast—requiring me to wash my bag afterward.Leave this balm at home for best results. The smell is supposedly lavender and tea tree but I find it a little reminiscent of gasoline.

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CBD-infused; small tin; a little goes a long way.

Greasy formula; overpowering scent; small amount in tin.

CBD-infused products are all the rage these days, with some athletes even ditching ibuprofen for the extract, and some studies have found CBD to have anti-inflammatory, anti-anxiety, and pain-relieving properties. This topical is my go-to balm when I have an open wound that won’t heal or inflammation in my joints or muscles. It has a thinner consistency than other balms in this review and can be quite greasy, so I use it only at home. The smell is an overpowering mix of menthol and cinnamon that can be too much sometimes, but it can have an aromatherapy effect when I’m in the right mood.

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The most bang for your buck; scentless; made from all organic ingredients.

Very loose consistency; the bigger container takes up more space in my pack.

If you’re looking for quantity, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Balm has you covered. For the same price as others in this review, you get twice the amount with very a similar formulation. I love this balm because it has no noticeable smell and only a few ingredients. The balm has a very loose, almost buttery consistency but that means a little goes a long way. Unlike other balms, this one can be found at most drug stores so it’s easy to replace when you run out. The larger size means I don’t usually carry it with me to the crag.

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The hype around a new breed of running tech is raising the ire of biomechanists. Here’s why.

A long-running debate flared up again a few months ago on Twitter, when tech reviewer Ray Maker posted a comparison of three devices—from Stryd, Garmin, and RunScribe—that promise to measure how much “power” you’re generating during a run. “Anybody got any insights into why people think estimating mechanical power during running is useful?” asked Max Donelan, a neuromechanics professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. “Unlike cycling, there is nearly no net external mechanical work.”

The answer, from someone at Stryd, one of the power meter makers, came swiftly and a bit peevishly: “Because it solves real problems.”

I’ve been following the rise of running power meters since 2014, when I first saw a Stryd prototype in action. It’s a neat idea, and one of the few genuinely new training aids in recent years. But I’ve had a really tough time getting my head around what running power actually means. Spurred by Donelan’s tweet, I’ve spent some time reading up on the concept and talking to people with widely diverging opinions on its practical usefulness. I don’t have an ultimate final answer on whether you should buy one, but I do have some thoughts on what a power meter is for runners, and what it’s not.

The Bike Analogy

To understand the potential appeal of running power meters, the best place to start is cycling. Bike-mounted power meters have been around since the 1980s. They measure the mechanical work you do in spinning the pedals by detecting the subtle bending of the cranks (or other parts of the bike, depending on the design of the meter you’re using). If you’re cycling at 250 watts, that means you’re doing 250 joules of work (about 0.06 calories) per second on the pedals, which primarily goes to overcoming air resistance (on flats and downhills) or gravity (on uphills).

Why is this useful to know? The golden promise made by power meters is that they give you a real-time measure of how hard your body is working. If you know that you’re capable of sustaining 250 watts for an hour, then you can use the power meter to keep your effort at that level even as your pace and heart rate rise and fall with hills and headwinds.

The implicit assumption here is that the watts you deliver to the pedals (the mechanical power) correspond to how hard your body is working overall and, more specifically, to the rate at which you’re burning food energy (the metabolic power). The metabolic power, after all, is what ultimately determines how quickly you’ll fatigue and whether you’ll exceed your lactate threshold or bonk. Normally, the only way to calculate metabolic power is to carefully measure the oxygen and carbon dioxide that you breathe in and out. That’s what the cumbersome mask and other equipment used during a VO2max test are for: to calculate metabolic power.

Humans are typically about 25 percent efficient at best, meaning that less than a quarter of our metabolic power gets converted into mechanical power, with the rest dissipated as heat. The precise relationship depends on exactly what your muscles are doing. Purely concentric contractions (a typical movement like lifting a weight or pressing down on a pedal) are the most efficient, at about 25 percent. Isometric contractions (where you exert force but your muscle doesn’t move, like pushing against a wall) consume metabolic power but don’t deliver any mechanical power. Eccentric contractions (braking motions like lowering a weight, where you’re pushing one way but moving in the opposite direction) actually have a negative efficiency of about -120 percent. There are also contributions from your tendons and other connective tissues, which can store energy like an elastic, then deliver mechanical power without consuming any metabolic power.

In other words, it’s complicated. If you’re cycling at 250 watts, it’s hard to know exactly how much metabolic power you’re consuming (or, to put it another way, how many calories you’re burning). It’s probably somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 watts, but your pedal-mounted power meter can’t tell you the exact number. There’s a crucial saving grace for cycling power meters, though, which is that your efficiency stays roughly constant under all conditions, because pedaling a bike requires essentially the same motion on hills and flats, gravel and asphalt, in headwinds, and so on. Whatever your metabolic power is when the cycling meter says 250 watts, that relationship will hold true under all these conditions. The bottom line: In cycling, power is a good proxy for how much energy you’re burning.

The Trouble with Running

A power meter for running is attractive for exactly the same reasons as in cycling: as a real-time calorie estimator. So why has it taken so long for power to come to running?

Most of the discussions about running power focus on how much harder it is to measure compared to cycling. And this is true. In running, you have internal work (your arms and legs pumping back and forth) and external work (your center of mass bouncing up and down); you have positive work (pushing off with each stride) and negative work (braking as you land); and you have a significant contribution from elastic energy stored in your Achilles tendon and other tissues as they stretch upon landing and then snap back to help you push off. According to some (though not all) estimates, the energy stored and released in this way may contribute as much as half of the power required for each stride.

There’s no single device that can measure all these contributions. But the big technical advance of the past few years has been the arrival of wearable accelerometers and other sensors that can measure your stride and center-of-mass motion with sufficient detail to estimate a large fraction of this power. You can compare the readouts from these power meters to the gold-standard power measurements from laboratory-grade force-sensing treadmills that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the agreement is pretty good. So, problem solved, right?

But the objection leveled by Donelan and other biomechanists isn’t really about measuring power; it’s about what power means. The underlying assumption is still that mechanical power during running is proportional to total energy consumption, as it is in cycling. But as obvious as that seems, it’s not at all clear that this is true. As one of the many papers on the topic argues, “measurements of whole body mechanical work cannot explain how the rates of metabolic energy consumption change with speed or animal size.” Or, as Donelan put it in a subsequent tweet: “The criticism of running mech[anical] power is not about how well current devices estimate it, but that even perfect measures are not closely related to effort in running.”

Stryd’s algorithm, as the company explained in a recent white paper, uses only the positive portion of mechanical power—how much you’ve generated to push off the ground. This seems reasonable on the surface, and the data (Figure 6 in the white paper) shows that this component has a nice tight correlation at various speeds with total energy consumption, which Stryd measures with VO2 equipment in a lab. In its dataset, Stryd’s power metric has a 96 percent correlation with total metabolic energy expenditure at different speeds—on a level treadmill.

Unlike in cycling, though, the relationship between mechanical power and total metabolic energy consumption doesn’t stay constant when conditions change. As you go up steeper and steeper hills, the contribution of elastic energy becomes increasingly negligible. At an incline of about 30 percent, you no longer have any bounce in your step. On downhills, your muscles do less positive work, and beyond about a 15 percent grade only do negative work, braking as you descend. Stryd’s conceptual shortcut, measuring only the positive mechanical power of your center of mass, can’t handle these changes and no longer has the same relationship with total energy consumption.

You might expect, then, that Stryd users would report crazy data whenever they venture into the hills. That doesn’t seem to be case—and the reason is simple. When I chatted with Stryd co-founders Kun Li and Wyatt Mohrman recently, they explained how their algorithm works. On level ground, as explained above, they estimate mechanical power from the motion of body’s center of mass, just like a force-sensing treadmill. But on hills, the relationship between mechanical power and energy consumption breaks down—so they reverse engineer it.

During the device’s development, they tested runners on inclined treadmills while wearing Stryd units, measured their oxygen and carbon dioxide consumption to calculate energy expenditure, and used that data to adjust their algorithm to give the “right” answers. So, on flat ground, they measured power (200 watts, say) and noted that this corresponded to a given rate of metabolic energy consumption (1,000 watts, say). On the inclined treadmill, they cranked up the speed and angle until the metabolic energy consumption was 1,000 watts, and then, for consistency, programmed the algorithm to call that power 200 watts.

From a scientific perspective, this means the number your running power meter spits out is essentially meaningless. Even on flat ground, “positive external mechanical power” is an indeterminate mishmash of contributions from muscles and springy tendons. It doesn’t accurately reflect the underlying processes that determine energy consumption. And on hills, you’re not looking at an actual power measurement at all—you’re looking at “the positive external mechanical power I would be generating on level ground if I burned energy at the same rate I’m burning it on this hill.” I don’t know the inner workings of the Garmin or RunScribe algorithms, but they face exactly the same issue: Either you’re measuring mechanical power or you’re estimating metabolic energy, but you can’t do both at once.

From a practical perspective, on the other hand, it’s totally fair to ask whether any of this really matters. Fundamentally, what Stryd and its competitors have built is a real-time metabolic energy consumption estimator—or, to be less fancy about it, a calorie counter optimized for running. It’s the equivalent of being able to carry around a full VO2 testing lab everywhere you run. Unlike heart rate, it responds instantly when you speed up or slow down. Unlike the pace on your GPS watch, it reflects the change in effort from going up and down hills. Unlike your internal sense of effort, it doesn’t (in theory) lie.

The Case Study

But does the disconnect between mechanical power and energy have any practical implications? Under certain circumstances, yes.

Consider, for example, some data collected by Hans van Dijk, a Dutch scientist who co-wrote The Secret of Running, on running with a power meter and optimizing running form. For cyclists, the power meter provides a useful tool for playing around with their riding position to look for efficiency improvements, so van Dijk and his colleagues tried a similar thing with running, asking a group of runners to increase or decrease their cadence by about ten steps per minute from their naturally chosen cadence. They measured efficiency in two different ways: once by measuring oxygen and carbon dioxide to calculate energy consumption, and once by measuring power using Stryd.

Here’s what that data looked like in trained runners:

In this graph, a higher value means the runners had to burn more energy to run at a given pace. The blue curve, calculated from gold-standard oxygen and carbon dioxide measurements, shows the expected pattern. The runners were most efficient at their self-chosen cadence; increasing or decreasing cadence by about ten steps per minute forced them to consume more energy at the same pace—a bad thing.

But the red curve, calculated from Stryd’s power data, shows a different pattern. In this view, increasing cadence was a seemingly good thing, reducing power consumption and saving energy. When I asked Li and Mohrman about this data, they explained that it’s likely an artifact of the inability of the power meter to account for elastic energy stored and released by tendons. An ultrarapid cadence reduces up-and-down bounce in your stride, so the power meter thinks you’re getting more efficient. But it doesn’t realize that you’re losing out on some of the “free” energy return from your tendons.

The Bottom Line

At this point, you can probably see why I didn’t promise an “ultimate final answer” on the utility of power meters. Personally, I think tuning in to your internal effort sensor is both highly effective and really useful for racing to your limits. When I run, I don’t have any problems discerning whether I’m going up or down a hill. But I can also see the appeal of objective data that can help you pace yourself in uneven terrain and compare efforts on different courses where pace and heart rate aren’t reliable gauges.

For scientists, it will remain annoying that they’re calling this “power” at all, rather than something generic that doesn’t carry preexisting meaning (like, say, “NikeFuel”) and makes clear that it’s really intended as a real-time calorie tracker. But if, as the Stryd tweeter I mentioned at the top promised, the device ends up solving real problems for athletes, most people won’t lose much sleep about the nomenclature. Time will tell.

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