The Paceline Cycling Podcast

On this week’s episode, we continue our interview with Carl Strong. Strong is unusual among framebuilders in that he has constructed bikes in every mainstream material being used in high-performance bikes: steel, aluminum, titanium and now carbon fiber in his new venture Pursuit by Carl Strong. In part two Carl…

Unless you’re racing cyclocross, the off season is here. Selene says she’s done her last event of the year and has recently returned to the gym for strength training. He gym routine may surprise you, but she says it’s what most cyclists ought to be doing when they are trying…

On this week’s show, my guest is frame builder Carl Strong. The Bozeman, Montana-based builder behind Strong Frames is best known for the titanium road and gravel frames he makes from titanium, something he’s been doing for more than 20 years. Recently, though, Strong launched a new venture, called Pursuit…

It’s November (you may have noticed) and that means that unless you’re at the height of your cyclocross season, November can present challenges in terms of motivation for workouts, and is the point in the year when finding time to ride in daylight can be a challenge if you normally…

Patrick is back from his trip to Taiwan. While there he attended a trade show, rode a few ebikes, did a bike tour down the eastern coast of Taiwan and then visited a series of factories. He even managed to squeeze in a group ride. Before the jetlag sets in…

Veteran Sarah Lee says she faced a choice. Figure out how to reconnect with her nation following her military service … or kill herself. Fortunately for her, and her many compatriots and fellow vets, she found a way to reconnect with her nation. She decided to ride coast to coast…

How hard would it be to climb the height of Mount Everest in a single ride? That is, riding until you climbed 29,029 feet. So what about Everesting on Mount Everest? If there’s a more difficult way to tackle that feat, it hasn’t occurred to us. Selene interviewed Shannon Bufton…

On this week’s show, my guest is writer and editor Peter Flax. Flax was features editor for the Hollywood Reporter. Flax is also a contributor to CyclingTips where he writes on a wide range of cycling culture topics. He is probably best known to cyclists as the former editor in…

Let’s talk about dressing for cold weather riding. How important is humidity in how you dress? Should 45 degree weather result in the same kit selection regardless of where you live? Maybe not. Selene digs into this with a funny story about some recent transplants who are struggling to adjust….

So just what is gravel? What should a gravel ride be? Should it include singletrack? Should there be creek crossings? What is reasonable for a person to expect when they sign up for an event and just what should a promoter be obligated to communicate to attendees? Selene has events…

Rebecca Rusch has what may be the ultimate nickname not just for a cyclist, but for any endurance athlete. She’s known as the Queen of Pain. And she has more than earned that nickname. She has won the Leadville 100 four times. She set the record for the Kokopelli Trail,…

For pro teams, finding sponsors and keeping said sponsors happy is more difficult than ever before. This week Selene takes a look at the new strategy from EF Education First-Drapac-Rapha. They have announced that they will be taking on some events that aren’t part of the World Tour, which means we…

Have you ever ridden across the country? It is one of those things that many of us have considered, and most of us haven’t found either the time or the motivation to do it. Selene encountered a vet named Sarah Lee who rode from the East Coast to the Golden…

Everesting. It’s a thing now, as we say. And Selene is a bit obsessed with the idea of doing one. Then she ran across a group that went to Everest Everest. How meta. How quintessential. How unbeatable. Image: Matthias Magg Patrick is back from Interbike and is afraid grandma might…

On this week’s show, my guest is Mike Ferrentino. In the early 1990s Ferrentino rose to national prominence with the launch of Bike Magazine and his column the Grimy Handshake. Since then, Ferrentino has gone on to help found the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship and directed marketing for Santa Cruz Bicycles. These days he’s in […]

Selene has a dilemma. She lives in a town with amazing riding culture and plenty of people to ride with. However. (There’s always a however, isn’t there?) Her favorite riding buddy is injured. He injured his ankle and is off the bike. And now she’s discovered that she, like so…

On this week’s show, we continue our conversation with Erik Noren of Peacock Groove. Last week we talked about some of Noren’s signature creations like his Evil Dead bike and his Appetite for Destruction bike. While those works generated some controversy, much of this week’s show will focus on a…

Forget ‘cross is coming. ‘Cross is here. Last weekend, Labor Day Weekend for crying out loud, the first big race of the season was held in Delaware—Granogue. And yet, it was hotter than than the seat in a Congressional hearing. Considering cyclocross was invented as a winter sport to keep…

Among the many builders I’ve interviewed in my career, I can say that Erik Noren is truly unique. In a room full of unusual cats, he still manages to stand alone. This episode, and the next, because honestly, the conversation was that long and too interesting to chop into a…

Selene is away at Rebecca’s Private Idaho, competing in the event’s new stage race that runs from August 30 to September 2. So rather than our usual show, we’re taking the opportunity to give you the full interview that she recorded with Hanna Grant, chef and author of Eat. Race…

On this week’s show we remember frame builder Dario Pegoretti who died last week at the age of 62. Pegoretti rose to prominence in the 1990s as a contract builder who provided custom frames for professional racers painted to look like the sponsor’s bike. He was so respected he built…

How neat a home do you keep? Do you do it all—cook, clean, ride 12 hours a week and write poetry before bed? As it turns out, we don’t either. This week Selene takes on the notion of doing it all, of having the clean house, the home repairs repaired,…

The emergence of HIA Velo, the parent company of Allied Cycle Works, is notable as much for the quality of the carbon fiber bicycles they make as where they make them. At a time when all of the major bike makers produce their carbon fiber bikes in Asia, Allied has…

How do you eat? This isn’t a question about whether or not you chew, but what do you fuel with? Selene talked to Hannah Grant, the author of Eat. Race. Win. a book all about fueling for cyclists, and for that matter, endurance athletes. We excerpt a piece of her…

Few people can claim to be as inextricably linked with the birth of mountain biking as Gary Fisher. His company MountainBikes produced what were arguably the very first production mountain bikes, before he went on to found Gary Fisher Bikes, which he later sold to Trek. Though Trek has stopped…

Selene has a dilemma: Some people don’t much like cyclists. What to do? You’re riding on a bike path where pedestrians and cyclists need to coexist, hopefully peacefully, but you need to pass. Do you ring a bell? Do you call, “On your left”? Do you fly by them at…

In Part II of my conversation with Mark DiNucci, we discuss some of the work he has done as an engineer working on contract for other manufacturers, like SAPA and Evil. We go into greater depth about his building today, including the tubeset and lugset he designed for his bikes,…

If you wanted to find the American who made the most profound impact on the ride of steel road bikes in the last 30 years, it would be hard to find a person more influential than Mark DiNucci. As an engineer for Specialized Bicycle Components, he was instrumental in creating…

Our man Patrick fell down this past weekend while on a mountain bike ride. Slid out and has the road rash souvenir. As crashes go, it’s a minor one, but it has encouraged a bit of reflection. How should one consider the consequences of crashing? And how should consideration of…

This week Selene poses an interesting question: How much riding do you need each week to be healthy both mentally and physically? Researchers at the University of Sydney published a study tracking 1500 healthy adults over the age of 49 for 10 years to find out what the optimal amount…

On this week’s show, my guest is Nick Legan, the author of Gravel Cycling, from VeloPress. Legan has one of the more varied backgrounds I’ve encountered in cycling. He began his career as a race mechanic, first working for Slipstream Sports and then working for Lance Armstrong’s Radio Shack team….

This week we take a look at the women and racing. There are some high points worth celebrating—Trek has created a new women’s pro team—and a whole lot of low lights, like podium girls. Selene and Patrick take a look at some of the criticisms of women’s racing as well…

On this week’s show, my guest is James Winchester, the product manager for Masi Bicycles. The role of a product manager at a bike company is, perhaps, one of the most visible expressions of what it is to work for a bike company. They are responsible for determining what a…

Selene has a dilemma. She’s watching the Tour de France. And enjoying it. She’s concerned that maybe she shouldn’t be enjoying it or that she should be more concerned about the doping or how awfully the UCI is running the sport. It seems a guilty pleasure and she’s not sure…

On this week’s show, my guest is Lennard Zinn, whose book, Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance, has just been released in its sixth edition by VeloPress. Zinn is best known for his work as technical editor for VeloNews, but he joined the magazine more than 20 years…

It’s summer, irrevocably so. Unless you live in Honduras, you may be struggling to deal with the heat. For all the talk that cycling is the perfect thing to do on a summer day, it is, as we say, easier said than done. Selene discusses how she can do well…

For as much as American cyclists idolized Greg LeMond in the 1980s and early 1990s, for a great many years there was really only one book on the three-time Tour de France Winner, “Greg LeMond’s Complete Book of Bicycling.” And while it included a fascinating look inside the 1986 Tour…

On this week’s show, my guest is framebuilder Todd Ingermanson who is part of a relatively rare set of artisans known for crafting nearly any sort of bike. While many builders base their business on mostly (or even exclusively) doing just one thing, such as road bikes, Ingermanson, under his…

Patrick is just back from several days in Ketchum, Idaho, where he attended a new media event called CrankTank. There were presentations by a number of exhibitors on everything from socks to ebikes. He details a few of the items that caught his fancy while there. You’ve probably heard of…

How much do you know about bearings? This week Patrick went to Oakland to visit the folks at Enduro Bearings and talk about how precision bearings have improved how a bicycle performs. He got an apples to apples comparison of how ball bearing quality has improved as well as an…

On this week’s show, my guest is teacher, author and creator Kristen Ulmer. In the early 1990s Ulmer rose to international prominence as the world’s foremost female big mountain extreme skier. It’s a status she held for an astonishing 12 years. Able to huck any cliff and ski die-if-you-fall lines,…

Our guest for this episode is Alison Tetrick who finished third this year at the Dirty Kanza 200, inarguably one of the world’s toughest gravel events. This is the full interview we excerpted on last week’s episode of the Paceline. Alison burst onto the gravel scene last year a relative…

On this week’s show, my guest is framebuilder Brad Bingham. He’s been called the finest TIG-welder in the world. Bingham rose to international prominence as a result of his work as a welder for Kent Eriksen Cycles. He has won the best welding award at the North American Handmade Bicycle…

We knew even before the race was over that we would be talking to Yuri Hauswald about his adventure at the new 350-mile version of Dirty Kanza, known as the DKXL. How could we not? The 2015 winner of Dirty Kanza is as warm an interview as we get and…

Last weekend’s Dirty Kanza introduced a new length, the DKXL, a 350-mile version of the unofficial world championship of gravel racing. In this episode we talk about both the 350 and the 250 and excerpt two coming interviews with Yuri Hauswald, who finished 2nd in the DKXL and Alison Tetrick,…

On this week’s show, my guest is Damon Rinard, the engineering manager for road bikes for Cycling Sports Group. Rinard has more than 30 years’ experience in the bike industry. He came to prominence as a result of his work for Cervelo where he was instrumental not just in developing…

Cycling is a great way to both enjoy the journey and the destination. Put another way it makes getting there fun. But how important should goals be? Are goals like finishing an event or standing on the podium the end in itself or just a means to an end? And…

Allen Lim has spent his career guiding athletes to their best possible performance. From the UC Davis Cycling Team to grand tour riders, Lim’s career as an exercise physiologist was focused on helping solve problems athletes had. Nearly accidentally, Lim began making his own drink mix to help athletes, and…

After a brief hiatus, the Paceline is back in a slightly different format. Fatty has a new Leadville podcast he’s producing, and as one of only eight people to complete Leadville 20 times, there is arguably no one better to produce a podcast devoted to all things Leadville. Hottie has…

This week I interview NAHBS Best in Show winner Gabriel Lang of Altruiste Bikes from New Brunswick, Canada. Lang won with a long-travel 29er that was truly unique among the bikes shown at the show. In this, our second episode, we talk to him about his background as a builder,…