Whether you are shopping for new tires or driving on rubber you already love, bear in mind: Even a brand new tire is barely nearly as good because the stress of the air in it. It’s crucial to mess around along with your tire stress relying on the way you journey, what terrain you’re driving, and the way a lot stress modifications all through the course of the day on account of altitude or temperature fluctuations.
“I like to think about tire pressure in the way I think about cooking,” says Calvin Jones. “Julia Child told you to measure the ingredients of a recipe using measuring cups and spoons.” Translated to biking, meaning a great stress gauge is one other helpful software. I like Park Tool’s Shop Inflator ($135). For a inexpensive two-in-one resolution, go along with Topeak’s Joeblow Sport 2Stage pump ($100), which not solely pumps air into your tires shortly with much less effort, but in addition has an easy-to-read analogue gauge on prime that is correct sufficient for cyclists who like to guage their tire stress by really feel.
“Feeling your tire pressure is really important,” says Jones. “A good cook is not putting in a teaspoon of salt, they are going to pour it in their hand and feel it out.” To get higher at extra precisely feeling out tire stress, Jones recommends holding a journal.
“People just throw air in there, dial it up, and go ride, but then it’s still this big mystery,” Jones says. “But if you start recording the pressure you put in and felt good on, say, a really rocky ride, that helps you remember what you need for future situations.”
Cyclists who ride in changing altitudes, those who compete in long-distance “ultra” rides, or those who just obsess over tire pressure will also want to invest in SRAM’s Tyrewiz ($199) a device that fits on the tire’s valve that relays real-time pressure to a mobile app. Over the long haul, this saves wear and tear on both the bike and the rider—riding in the correct pressure range helps avoid flats and blowouts that inevitably come with under- or over-inflated tires.
Stay Fit
Too many holiday treats—cookies, beers, cocktails, whatever your vice—will always slow you down on the bike. We’re all for the occasional indulgence, but a way to ensure you don’t go overboard is to do a weekly weigh-in. Experts recommend that weighing in once per week (rather than once per day), allows you to focus on healthy behaviors rather than become hyper-focused on small weight fluctuations that may mean nothing. Garmin’s new Index S2 Smart Scale ($150) tracks weight, BMI, body fat percentage, skeletal muscle mass, and water weight. Weigh in for a month and it will show your fluctuations in a chart format so you can easily see how much you are progressing or regressing.
Those obsessed with measurements like body fat, however, need to understand that the scale estimates the metrics other than weight using impedance, which means that it runs a small electrical current up through your feet measuring the body’s resistance to the current. The scale then crunches age, height, weight, gender, and activity level into a proprietary algorithm that produces the body fat, bone density, and skeletal muscle mass measurements. These may be close to your real measurements, but are likely not perfect.
In winter months, it might be mandatory to ride inside or to cross train, which is where Wahoo’s new Elemnt Rival ($380) multisport GPS watch comes in handy. Unlike a handle-bar mounted GPS navigation system that most cyclists prefer, you can take this watch anywhere—to the gym, the yoga studio, on a run, or even into the pool.
Designed for triathletes, the watch’s “Touchless Transition” permits customers to push only one button at the start of a race or exercise, and it mechanically is aware of when the transition to a brand new sport happens. Its “multi-sport handover” function permits a handlebar-mounted GPS just like the Wahoo Elemnt Roam ($380) to show cumulative exercise metrics from all disciplines gathered from the watch. Another helpful function is its built-in, wrist-based optical heart-rate monitor. For elevated accuracy, it’s additionally suitable with Wahoo’s Ticker X ($80) coronary heart fee sensor chest strap that tracks coronary heart fee, energy burned, working analytics, and indoor biking cadence.
The watch already tracks multitudes of sports activities together with open-water swimming, working, triathlon, indoor coaching, energy coaching, and yoga. But, say you wish to add a sport like Nordic snowboarding. It’s straightforward so as to add and customise the metrics for any sport by way of the accompanying app. And any day now, Wahoo says it should provide a firmware replace that can observe your sleep. So relaxation straightforward.
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