Rowman today I want to talk to you about whether you need a winter…
Rowman today I want to talk to you about whether you need a winter bike or not. Let's keep it on intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long changes? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to the Roadman Podcast. Thanks for joining me again, Roadman. I appreciate your time, attention and concentration as always. We're back for another Roadman Bites and I want to talk to you today about a winter bike. Now, for some people listening, this will seem like a foreign concept where you're like, I already have a bike. What's this idea of a winter bike? Surely it's just the bike I have and winter is a season, so I'll turn off this podcast. Do not winter bike and the idea of having a purpose-built bike for the winter It's nearly as all this is sport as cycling itself and as I'm looking out the window here in Ireland The weather has turned and it's really just got me thinking maybe I need to get up to the attic and get down my winter bike So today I want to explain to you what a winter bike is and explain to you why you should consider getting yourself a winter bike but before I do as As always, I'm going to ask you to pause this podcast and head on over to patreon.com. The link is in the description down below. It's like patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. That's the way I fund the podcast. It's just no sponsors for this podcast at the moment. Maybe we'll bring in a sponsor. Hopefully if it's a fitting sponsor, we'll bring one in at a time down the road. But for the moment, it's entirely funded off listener contributions. So I really depend on you guys. So if you're getting some value from this podcast, consider heading on over to patreon.com and it'll cost you the price of a point of beer once a month to say thanks for the podcast. I'm getting some value out of it and in return you'll get access to my secret podcast once a month which is a Patreon only. Ask me anything podcast and some of the guys have some great questions in there for this month's one so I'm really excited to bring the September edition out to those guys and at the end of every month I'll bring the Ask Me Anything secret podcast. Okay, okay, let's talk Winter Boyks. So why would you consider getting a Winter Boyk? Well really just two facets to this. It's to save wear and tear and purpose built. So let's think about to say of wear and tear. I'm looking across the room here at my shiny servello or five with my nice quark power meter, my nice carbon wheels and it's a machine built for the dry road, it's built for the sun and honestly it just makes you feel nice because everything works perfect, everything's lubricated, everything's just new shiny, it's all top quality. winter is if you especially if you live in Ireland or the UK or you know I've winter in Toronto a lot the roads are salted, they're tractor and slurry all over the roads it rains or the surface moisture on the ground for big parts of the winter that does not combine well with my or five so parts get broken especially if you're not maintaining them and it's a big job cleaning the bike I'm living in the apartment it's difficult to hose your bike and clean your bike and the loo parts after every single spin. So the idea for a winter bike is we move away from having our Jura Ace race porpoise case or our you know SRAM red stuff over to cheaper stuff like Tiagra 105 stuff that if it breaks it's easily replaced but stuff that doesn't prioritize performance it prioritizes durability and that means it's able to take more awareness here because trust me as someone who's ridden through 10 plus winters on the bike, being able to take wear into her is of paramount importance.
Want a bike which is purpose built for the demands of winter
Also you want a bike which is purpose built for the demands of winter. So we think about winter, the biggest thing is rain and surface water on the ground. You can have the most expensive 900 euro volochio jacket in the world, But it's not going to keep you as dry as a properly fitted set of full length mudguards. We're actually debating this the moment. We have a Saturday spin, a roadman spin which meets every Saturday in Dublin. If you're actually, incidentally, if you're at Dublin base, pop me a DM on Instagram. And I will let you know the details on that one, but it's every Saturday. But we're debating at the moment whether we should make mudguards compulsory for the Saturday spin. It's probably not going to take one wet spin before we we bring in the compulsory rule, we're at this kind of transitionary time of year now where some people are on their race bikes, some people are starting to crack out their winter bikes, so I think we might leave it a few more weeks, but we'll most likely make it a compulsory rule, you can't ride with the group unless you have mudguards, because that's a respect for the person behind you. No one wants to come out on a Saturday ride and get a face full of your mode going into their out for the entire day. I just love the winter bike and I love the idea that it's it's purpose-built for the natures of our environment and it's purpose-built for the demands of it's like utility or its form over funk it's function over form it's a utilitarian vehicle so for me I have the full-length pump strapped to my winter bike I have my saddle bag on with all my tools and my tubes and patch kits of full-length mudguards, of a good set of lites, of heavier, wider tyres, so Roy 27 mill tyres and I'll have them as heavier tyres. So I do prioritize grip, I know a lot of people say gator skins and if you go into the boy shop they'll say the gator skins and we really have a problem with our boy shops and our boy industry because online chain reactions it's just too overwhelming unless you've been in sport for a long time you don't know what parts the boy, you don't know what's compatible and then you go into the shops and there's like transition year students or some dude in his fourth year college that's talking about what horrors he uses but the reality is he's never slid out on a corner he doesn't know what horrors he use by the market and spiel that's actually why I put together the roadman resources and for me gator skins and stuff like that as durable as they are they're just not appropriate horrors for the winter so I've added tires in there going check the mail they're like continental ultra sports I think I'm recommending and they're very grippy towers and that's why I recommend them. We can make things puncture resistant like in the winter I'll often take an old set of towers, cut the side walls off them and it use the body of the tower and stick that inside my other tower makes them heavier increases roll and resistance but it makes them puncture proof and you still have the grip of the outer because we're not worried about weight on a winter bike We're worried about weight on a race bike because we all know these stats about, you know, one kilogram heavier is a minute slower on a 10 kilometer climb. But winter, we're not worried about that. We're still getting the training effect. Our body is still producing the watts, our heart rate is still pumping the blood. Regardless of the weight of the bike, we're just going slower. So what I actually think is a great idea and I've often done it is I take an old race bike and I turned that into my winter bike. So if stuff's getting outdated and I want to freshen up a race bike, I'll get my new race bike and I'll keep the old one and I'll stick on the full lint, mud guards, I'll pay back some of the old Hager or Jurei stuff that I might have on my winter bike, on a race bike and I'll put on Sora, Tiagra, 105.
I'll ditch the carbon wheels because no one wants to be breaking on…
I'll ditch the carbon wheels because no one wants to be breaking on carbon rams, alloy rams break way better. Actually an interesting, an interesting trend that's I think gonna emerge and rightfully so is gravel bikes. I think gravel bikes have a real place as doubling up for a winter bike because what are we looking for in winter bike? We're looking for comfort, we're looking for the ability to fit in mudguards and attach a lot of luggage and bits and pea. I don't mean luggage like bags but bits and pieces like lights, pumps, saddle bags, extra water bottles, that type stuff. And a gravel bike does all that. There's a lot of fittings for sticking extra shit onto your bike. You have the white tires and as long as you don't go for a cyclo-crossed style bike, you're going to have fittings for your mudguards as well. So gravel bike is actually a perfect second bike to have. Ideal world, I'll be going for race bike, gravel bike, but I'll call it gravel slash winter bike. In my head anyway, that's how you can justify having the gravel bike because a gravel dedicated bike maybe just doesn't work. But I just love have there's something beautiful about the winter bike you better well-tugged out winter bike it doesn't have to be carbon it can be stale it can be aluminium it's durability over performance that's what we're prioritising so if you don't have a winter bike or you're wandering and you're sitting on the fence saying should i get a winter bike should i not get a winter bike i would highly highly encourage you to get one in my 10 plus year i feel like an L.A. from sound of in select and 10 plus years because i remember getting started and chatting to guys who had 10 years experience and think and they were 100 years old. It's amazing how fast that experience takes up on you and you go from being the complete newbie asking these questions to advising people on what to do. But a winter bike is definitely one of the best purchases I've made. You can really piece it together super cheap, cyclist, buoyant, sell on Facebook is a great resource for picking up second-hand parts, eBay, adverts, these type of places you can pick up parts because it's nearly discarded parts from someone else are your treasure. They're the bits that are gonna build this winter boy for you and they're gonna give it the character. Stick on your brook saddle, your super comfortable saddle, your big metal full full length frame pump. It's gonna be a ting of beauty. I'll get a picture up on my Instagram when I have my winter boy built. I'm almost inspired to get up to the attic and pull it down now. Raul man, ride safe out there and I'm gonna chat to you all again tomorrow. Hey everybody it's Anthony again, really quick I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge, it's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, Train and plans regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans shopping list, and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio, and go to roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day, or check out the link in the bio. That roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.