My favourite bike company Specialized is quite appropriately focusing on women during the month of March and encouraging their retailers like Ashfield Cycles to get involved. On Tuesday, 20 March from 6.30 pm John and the team at Ashfield Cycles will host a ‘Women’s Clinic Night’ where women can come along to learn tips on how to maintain your bike, change a tyre and skills for the road or trail. You’ll also have the opportunity to meet other women who are interested in cycling. You can also enter a great competition being run by Specialized to win a women’s road
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Bike review – Eddy Merckx EFX-3 women’s specific road bike
Merckx EFX-3 I was thrilled when David Cook of Clarence Street Cyclery asked me if I’d like to ride the new Eddy Merckx women’s specific road bike and write a review for my blog. It’s my very first bike review so don’t be expecting any technical talk or voice of experience. For benchmarking purposes my own current road bike is a 2011 Specialized Amira Expert which has a full carbon frame and the gearing is full Ultegra. I really love my bike but I also jumped at the opportunity to ride a different bike for a week and certainly didn’t
Read moreJunior development at Lidcombe Auburn Cycle Club
One of the things you will have learned if you’ve read other parts of this blog is that I’m a member of a great cycle club called Lidcombe Auburn Cycle Club known as LACC. A new innovation for the club is its focus on junior riders or more specifically its junior female riders under the stewardship of the very enthusiastic Gay Chandler and her trusty husband and sidekick Ian Watson. I caught up with Gay recently and asked her a few questions about the team she’s nurturing known as the Pixies. Q: When did the Pixies team start? A: The
Read moreSpecialized lululemon women’s pro cycling team – raising the bar
I had the pleasure of meeting the owner of the new Specialized lululemon women’s cycling team yesterday. We enjoyed a cafe visit overlooking the lovely Bronte beach in Sydney’s east. Kristy Scrymgeour was previously the Marketing and Communication Director at the high profile HTC Highroad team that folded last year. Kristy is quite humble about how she started the new team almost overnight late last year. The timing was quite good for her because she was ready to move on to other things and the team’s demise gave her that push. Interestingly it was the female team members who didn’t
Read moreSecret Women Cyclists’ Business
When I first started riding a little over three years ago, many of my non cycling girlfriends would say to me “You must get such a sore backside after riding so far on that little seat”. But the truth is that it wasn’t my bum that was sore but my more vulnerable ‘girl bits’ that really suffered when I first started riding. After three years I’m pleased to say that I rarely get any soreness or pain down there so I assume I’ve just ‘hardened up’ so to speak. I also noticed that not many women spoke about this problem
Read moreIndoor bike trainers – Do I really need one?
If you live in Sydney and you love road cycling like me then you’re probably a little frustrated at the moment. That’s because it’s the height of summer and we’ve had heaps of rain the past month which really impinges on getting out regularly on the bike. So I thought it timely to talk about indoor trainers and whether it’s worth the investment or not. Rain aside indoor trainers are great for cold weather or when you’re short of time. I’m lucky enough to live in a place where the weather is conducive to cycling all year round. The coldest
Read moreSpecialized supports women’s cycling
If you’re a regular reader of this blog then you’ll know by now that I’m a fan of the US bike company Specialized. It’s partly because I really love their products which so far for me includes my bike, shoes, socks and gloves but also because they are great supporters of women’s cycling teams. Many of you would have probably heard of the European based Specialized Lululemon team which is a spin-off from the ill-fated HTC Highroad team that disbanded last year (a blog post coming on that one soon) but Specialized is also working with women’s cycling in Australia
Read moreMy Tour Down Under experience
I’ve just returned home after a great holiday to watch the Tour Down Under (TDU) in South Australia and I thought I’d share some of my experiences with you. The TDU has become a bit of an annual pilgrimage for Phillip and I because we were visiting for the fifth time in 2012. But like most cycling activities our interest and time spent has grown exponentially in the TDU. Our first in 2008 centred around Phillip’s participation in his first charity ride – the JDRF Ride to Cure Diabetes. We probably watched a stage or two of the TDU but
Read moreMy JDRF ride – reaching the next level
The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) annual Ride to Cure Diabetes is pretty special to me because it’s the reason I started my love affair with cycling three and a half years ago. This was my fourth time I had participated and while a lot of people think that raising $3,500 to do the ride is a huge challenge, for me riding the 160 km course was far harder. In my previous three rides I’d only done the 80 km course which was hard for me the first time (only four months after I started riding) but it had become
Read moreBird Strike on the LACC Sunday ride
The most bizarre thing happened on my ride this past Sunday and I’ve got a great video to go with the story thanks to my friend Howard Brown. I was doing what I do most Sundays and enjoying a bunch ride on Sunday morning around Homebush with the guys from my bike club LACC. For those who know the area we had come along Hill Road and turned left into Pondage Link and I was on the front. The next thing I heard and felt this soft thud which I later realised was a low flying black bird with really
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