In Episode 11 of the Mountain Bikes Apart Podcast, Colin and Tom discuss bike storage, epic adventure rides and as always, try their best to answer another great question from one of our listeners, this time from Benjamin Leung.
It’s a packed show, so let’s get right into it…
Bike storage setups
Colin and Tom kick off the show discussing Tom’s rather unique bike storage setup, where he’s managed to find an apartment with a whole separate storeroom for his bikes, gear and tools.
Tom talks about how he stores the bikes here and how he’s set it up to work and maintain his fleet with a work stand and toolkit.
Colin then shares some great tips about saving space and mounting bikes to a wall so that they’re not all crammed together.
Bike storage solutions could be a whole topic in and of itself, so we’ll certainly be covering it more in an upcoming show.
In the meantime, we’d love to hear about your storage hacks and tricks, so please send us a message and let us know what tips you can share!
Epic adventures
Next, Colin and Tom discuss some of their plans and ideas for multi-day epic rides and where they’d like to go given the opportunity.
Colin tells us how he has unfinished business with one particular epic ride, after doing the coast-to-coast in Scotland many years ago, but only being able to ride the first day due to IT band problems.
Bikepacking is an area of cycling that has been gaining a lot of popularity and media coverage over the last few years, and is something both Colin and Tom would like to do properly in the future.
Maybe they can coordinate a Mountain Bikes Apart epic ride at some time in the future? It would certainly make an interesting podcast.
Tom also tells us how he’s very interested in ultra running and would love to do one of the famous ultra-marathons one day – when his cycling career is over of course!
Standing on the pedals
This episode’s listener question comes in from Benjamin Leung and he asks about standing up on the pedals when riding and what the benefits of doing so are.
Tom tells us that as mountain bikers, we probably spend more time than many other cycling disciplines out of the saddle and standing on the pedals, since we’re often forced to generate a lot of power to get up steep and/or technical climbs.
This riding style can help you to use your bodyweight to produce more power through the bike and also helps to stretch out the lower back and use different muscles than you would when you’re seated, giving them a much-needed break.
It can’t be ignored than standing also takes a lot of pressure off of your ass, which is especially important on long or particularly bumpy rides!
In terms of downsides to standing pedalling, Colin and Tom both agree that it’s harder to maintain traction with the rear wheel, especially if your pedal stroke is a little jerky and lacking smoothness.
What’s more, it’s often not the most efficient style in terms of energy cost, so should be alternated with seated pedalling too.
Over to you
As always, we’d love to hear your questions and feedback, so please get in touch with us! You can tweet Colin or Tom using the handles @thepodcasthost and @bytombell respectively, or use the contact form on the site. Tom can also be contacted via his own site, where he offers his best cycling training tips.
We love getting your voice recordings and playing them on the show, so if you do have a question, please pull out your smartphone, record your question and send us the audio file!
Enjoy your riding and we’ll see you on the next one!
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