“It’s an idea that has potent consequences for recreational riders,” Coach Fred says. “If we can pinpoint a few small changes in our bike fits, diets, training plans, event-day organization and many other areas of possible improvement, the resulting performance gains can be large. Look at it this way: a dozen changes, each yielding improvements of less than 1%, can result in total gains of 10% or more.”
Let that sink in for a minute: Instead of slavishly working on one big improvement at a time (the normal m.o. of roadies), we could instead – and without a whole lot of effort – tick off a dozen or so smaller improvements that, taken together, can make a sizable overall impact on our cycling.
In Porte’s case, his motorhome rolls to every team hotel on the Giro, allowing him to get his evening massage in relative comfort and quiet, and sleep in a comfy bed with no surrounding distractions, on his own schedule. It’s yet another “marginal gain” in his arsenal that he hopes to exploit to do well in the Giro.
Click the read the Cyclingnews article on Porte’s “marginal gains” motorhome.
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RBR in the News
As a lead-in to the Tour of California, the Sacramento Bee ran a story in its Sunday edition on the move in the pro peloton, and increasingly among rec riders, to wider tires.
Yours truly was interviewed for the piece, as was Bicycle Quarterly’s Jan Heine and other industry types.
The piece broke no new ground, but it’s interesting to see a daily newspaper take on a topic mostly reserved for the RBRs and BQs of the world. (The Bee reporter happened to read Jan’s recent article in RBR Newsletter! He’s an avid roadie.)
Here’s a link: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article20563743.html
— John Marsh
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Baseball, Football, Aussie Rules – Why Not by Bike?
Despite its loss of a certain amount of our attention span over the years, baseball still holds sway as the pre-eminent sport of summer in the U.S. Which makes it the sport most likely to be involved in road trips where fans try to see a game in every Major League stadium during a summer.
Usually, they do it in car. Not so 22-year-old Matt Stoltz. He’s doing an 11,300-mile tour this summer – by bike! Stoltz plans to visit all 30 stadiums in a trip to raise money for the organization Biking for Baseball.
Starting April 7 in Seattle, he had covered California and Arizona as of last week. He’s riding without support and sleeping anywhere he can, on a $5,000 budget for the summer.
Here’s a link to a Good Morning America story about his journey.
Obviously baseball isn’t played everywhere, so if you’re looking for an adventurous trip by bike, why not consider a journey to see every English Premier League stadium, or every Australian Football League stadium?
Sounds like fun to me!
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Next Premium Prize
3T has agreed to provide a great combo prize of its ARX II Pro Stem and the new 3T Eye (pictured), the rugged miniature display that 
puts real-time data from smartphone training apps and ANT+™ power/ heart-rate cadence devices on handlebars, in the rider’s line of sight. (The winner can choose the appropriate stem size, of course.)
Any new or renewing Premium Members between May 1 (when we gave away our last great prize) and June 30 are eligible for the drawing. We’ll announce the winner in the July 2 RBR Newsletter.
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New RBR Website On the Way
Many of our regular correspondents have heard me talking about this for a year now, because it’s been a very (excruciating so!) deliberate, extremely labor-intensive process. But I’m finally comfortable enough with the progress to let you know that we’ll be launching a new RBR website in the next couple of months.
I’ve been working (every spare moment for months now) directly with a trusted, long-time associate who’s a terrific designer and web developer on a very open, airy, user-friendly design that I’m confident you’ll find imminently more easily navigable, better organized, far easier to search and find specific info, and, in short, simply a much more useful tool to help you as a road cyclist.
It will also feature “responsive” design that adapts the layout and functionality of the site to whatever mobile device you’re using.
We will, of course, continue to deliver RBR Newsletter each week. It will come in a slightly different package, but the goods inside will be the same quality content across the spectrum of useful how-to road cycling intel and info. (And we’ll feature even more of that “good stuff” regularly on the pages of the site throughout each week when the new site is live.)
In the weeks to come, I’ll be sharing more about the new site, including screen shots, to highlight some of the features.
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