The World’s Lightest Electric Bike!

In 2009 British electric bike manufacturer Cytronex launched the world’s lightest electric bicycle, the Cytronex Powered Cannondale Capo, which at 13.6Kg weighs less than many unassisted bicycles. Towards the end of 2009 Cytronex were approached by Channel 5’s Gadget Show to build a bicycle for a race between one of their presenters (Ortis Deley) and a professional cyclist (winner of the Tour of Ireland – Russell Downing).

Cytronex was chosen by Gadget Show because it is fitted to existing bicycles with very little visual impact and without affecting the quality of ride – the water bottle battery provides effective disguise, the motor is about the same size as a hub dynamo and the system runs silently.

The Super Six is Super Hot!

After consulting with Cannondale, Cytronex decided to electrify a Cannondale Super Six for the race. The resulting electric bike weighs in at just 12.9Kg – lighter even than the Capo. For Cytronex the object of the exercise was not to demonstrate that the system can transform us into professional cyclists, but to show that anyone can now enjoy cycling, and more to the point, that anyone can use a bicycle for effective transport. You can watch the race by clicking on this link: The Gadget Show hill climb challenge

Cytronex designer, Mark Searles comments “Time spent crawling to work in a car is dead time, part of your life being wasted that can add up to many weeks every year. It makes perfect sense for busy people to get the exercise they need on the way to work. It’s a whole lot more fun than the gym and Cytronex is designed to allow the rider to use as much, or as little effort as they wish. What’s more, many of our customers find that they can get to work faster than they ever did in the car!”

Mark has first hand knowledge of this because the company has been so busy in the last year that he has almost no time for sport. He is still using the company’s second ever prototype to cycle to work, although he does also have the new Cytronex Powered Cannondale Super Six model for days with fine weather.

Cytronex fit their system to a wide range of bicycles, from hybrid bikes and city single speed bikes like the Capo (available in flat bar or drop handlebar versions) right up to top of the range road racing bikes like the Super Six.

Cytronex Web site:
http://www.cytronex.com

To buy a Cytronex Powered bicycle:
http://www.no-hills.com

It’s about time I do another product review. To kick off November I thought I’d spread the 411 on a up and coming company called Ridge Medical. It was just over a month ago I met Mike Curry and his wife at Interbike in Vegas. I was passing by their booth and stopped to give them a magazine; as it turns out that was the most important stop I made that day. I had already been walking around the convention non-stop the previous day and for about 4 or 5 hours that day.

I had no idea what their booth was for I just wanted to pass on my business card and magazine. Long story short I was dying of lower back and knee pain not to mention my inner thighs where chafed all to hell! There must have been something in my eyes or perhaps despair in my voice that prompted Mrs. Curry to offer me a BIG tube of “Faster Than Glucosamine” for my back and knees and a canister of “TriSlide” for the chafing.

Needless to say I made a Speedy-Gonzalez-B-Line for the bathroom and I’m happy to say I found a tremendous amount of relief. If I didn’t already say thank you… THANK YOU, Ridge Medical!

Oye vay, I’ve got to tell you Interbike 2009 was my first working convention where I actually was working, walking, talking and networking non-stop. I guarantee you I learned my lesson; before walking a half marathon passing out business cards and magazines it’s a smart idea to lube up before you saddle that horse!

Back to the product at hand. After returning home and doing a little research over the past month or so I’ve found that it’s not just me giving praise to Ridge Medical. All sorts of media publications and outlets seem to be riding the Ridge Medical bandwagon… why wouldn’t they? If you’ve got a good product it pretty much does the marketing all by itself.

In any case, I can say with confidence if you have knee, joint and muscle pain settle for nothing less; Faster Than Glucosamine will exceed your expectations and have you sighing in relief. I’ve found that if I put a little on before I go riding it helps me warm up faster, this is a BIG plus because this lowers my chances of strains and injuries.

So swing on by the Ridge Medical website and show this local SoCal company some WCM love!

Minneapolis (Oct. 19, 2009) – A national program is offering race promoters the opportunity to send their top amateurs to the 2010 edition of the Nature Valley Grand Prix (Minnesota & Western Wisconsin, June 16-20) to compete against the country’s top men and women professional bicycle racers.

Entering its third year, the “Nature Valley Pro Ride” will select amateur men and women at regional races around the United States to become part of a pair of Nature Valley composite teams for the 12th annual edition of the five-day stage race that begins June 16.

The Nature Valley Grand Prix is the top ranked event on the 2010 USA Cycling National Race Calendar (NRC), attracting tens of thousands of cycling enthusiasts, pro athletes and avid recreational riders to Minnesota.

“This is a chance for a race promoter to raise the participation and visibility of their event at no extra cost,” Nature Valley Grand Prix Race Director David LaPorte said. “As for the riders who are selected, they can look forward to racing in front of huge crowds and being treated like a rock star at our event.”

“I made the commitment to drive the 13 hrs to St. Louis for the Hillsboro-Roubaix road race”, wrote 2009 Nature Valley Pro Rider Chris Winn of Lakewood, Colorado, in his blog. “Long way to go for a bunch of Coloradans for a weekend suffer-fest. The race was the second qualifier event for the Nature Valley Pro Ride, a chance for amateurs to get the complete pro package treatment in a composite team for the Nature Valley [Grand Prix] Stage Race in June.”

Amateur racers (Category I men and Category 1,2 women) who qualify at a Nature Valley Pro Ride event receive a “battlefield promotion” that earns them free entry to the race, travel stipends, team clothing, housing, ground transportation, and staff support for their composite team.

Races that become part of the Nature Valley Pro Ride schedule can expect an aggressive marketing and media relations campaign, as well as on-site sampling of Nature Valley Granola Bars and complimentary staffing of the booth by company representatives.

“We’re looking for the top regional races who want to take their game to a higher level,” LaPorte said. “We’ll consider road races, criteriums and stage races, as long as they get strong fields. And our promotional programs will make those fields even stronger.”

To be considered for the 2010 Nature Valley Pro Ride, a race must be permitted through USA Cycling and take place no later than June 13. Preference will be given to races that take place between March and mid-May.

Interested promoters must submit their application by Dec. 15. More details and a downloadable application can be found at www.naturevalleyproride.com.

The 2009 Nature Valley Pro Ride schedule will be announced Jan. 4, 2010.

— more —

About the Nature Valley Grand Prix
The Nature Valley Grand Prix began as a one-day criterium in Saint Paul in 1999. Its schedule and prestige have grown steadily until now, in its 12th year, it is ranked at the top of the USA Cycling National Racing Calendar. The 2010 Nature Valley Grand Prix schedule includes a unique mix of three criteriums (short circuit races), two road races and a time trial as the stages of the race move from downtown Saint Paul, to Cannon Falls, to Minneapolis, to Menomonie, and, finally culminates in Stillwater. For more information visit: www.NatureValleyGrandPrix.com

About Nature Valley
Nature Valley, the brand that created the granola bar category in 1975, brings variety to healthy, active consumers looking for wholesome and great-tasting snacks. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Nature Valley is part of General Mills, a leading global manufacturer and marketer of consumer foods products.

About the USA Cycling National Racing Calendar
Entering its 14th season in 2010, the USA Cycling National Racing Calendar (NRC) is an all-inclusive road cycling series sanctioned by USA Cycling. It is designed to provide a ranking system for all elite-level cyclists, both amateur and professional, through participation in the nation’s premier cycling events. For more information on the NRC, visit USA Cycling or contact Micah Rice at (719) 434-4283 or mrice[at]usacycling[dot]org.

Just posted this morning from the USA Cycling website, please read the following.

USA Cycling would like to offer our sincere apologies to anyone who experienced difficulties registering for the upcoming Cyclo-cross National Championships during the early morning hours last weekend. Due to the overwhelming response to registration, the servers of our on-line registration partner were overwhelmed.

USA Cycling would like to emphasize that all masters racers regardless of time of registration will be ordered according to their current racing license category, ie. Cat. 1, followed by Cat. 2, etc. Only those Masters within the same category and age division will be seeded according to time of registration. Please click here for a complete explanation of call up procedures for all age categories and racing divisions.

In an effort to ensure the most fair and equitable racing environment possible, we are going to re-evaluate the method by which we determine the start order for Masters racers at the 2010 Cyclo-cross National Championships. We will consider several options, including the utilization of USA Cycling’s Results and Rankings System, to determine more extensive call-up procedures for 2010 and beyond. In order to ensure that you have the opportunity to weigh in during this process, we will include a section on this topic in the post-event survey for the 2009 Cyclo-cross National Championships.  We look forward to hearing your feedback!

You’ll have to excuse me if my vanity gets the best of me but when it comes to getting off my bike and walking into Starbucks to get my caffeine fix… I’d rather not be a hot sweaty mess and blind as a bat. You and I both know, there’s a time and a place for hot and sweaty!

Have you ever heard of the Sweat GUTR™? If you haven’t heard of it you’ve surely seen the ads on Facebook and several other popular websites. In any case, I’m here to tell you first hand this simple device actually works! Up until recently I had been seeing the ads for the Sweat GUTR™ everywhere but never paid to much attention or clicked on any of the ads. As chance would have it I was passing by the Sweat GUTR™ booth at Interbike a few weeks ago and stopped to ask, what is this Sweat GUTR™ all about?

Luckily for me the person I asked was none other than president and founder Erick P. Flatt. I shook Erick’s hand and told him jokingly I had seen the ads for Sweat GUTR™ everywhere and all over my Facebook account, he couldn’t have been more delighted. Erick then went on to explain the technology behind this simple practical device that has everyone saying… “why didn’t I think of that”!

Erick then pointed out that Old Man Winter is right around the corner and a lot of people (not fortunate enough to live in SoCal like myself) will be making the transition to cycling indoors. Here’s what he had to say.

Riding indoors this Winter

Indoor cycling classes are becoming increasingly popular, especially during the winter months. Whether you’re participating in a cycling class at your local bike shop’s clinics, riding on rollers or an indoor trainer with cycling buddies in your garage, indoor cycling can be a great way to stay in shape during the winter months. However, working up a sweat takes on a whole new meaning when cycling indoors. Most cyclists will drape towels over their handlebars or use bike bras to protect their bikes from the endless sweat. Even cyclists that don’t normally perspire much will drip with sweat while cycling indoors and those of us that are real sweaters will pour buckets of sweat. Needless to say saturation becomes an understatement and cloth sweatbands don’t stand a chance of keeping our eyes clear and dry.

Thinking about using a hat or bandanna? Sixty percent of your body heat escapes through the top of your head. Do you really want to trap all that heat and add to that steam bath feeling?

Enter the Sweat GUTR™ sweatband. Channeling sweat away, your eyes stay clear and dry. Since the GUTR™ is nonabsorbent, you never have to worry about it saturating like cloth sweatbands.

The GUTR’s very small profile allows heat to freely escape off the top of your head to help keep you cooler. And, when you’re done cycling the GUTR™ is basically dry and not a soggy mess to deal with. After a quick rinse to remove any salt residue, the Sweat GUTR™ is ready for your next training session.

Echo’s sweaty testimony

So needless to say after chatting up Mr. Flatt (and learning more about sweat than I ever thought I’d learn), before parting ways he gave me a GUTR™ to try for myself. I was a bit skeptical, having been the punchline for many jokes in the past because of my excessive sweat (and funk)… I was thinking to myself this is too good to be true.

Unfortunately the Sweat GUTR™ didn’t do anything for my body funk after 2 hours of trail riding but it did keep the sweat out of my eyes and face! I’m also an avid tennis player so I took it out on the tennis court with me and by George if I didn’t have one of the best games of my life! Tennis is 99% mental, I don’t know if it was me thinking I had an edge with the Sweat GUTR™ or if I just thought I was too cool because nobody else had one… either way I kicked some tennis rear-end while wearing the Sweat GUTR™.

If you haven’t gotten the message already… go get the Sweat GUTR™ it will definitely prove useful, comfortable and you’ll be the envy of all your friends. You can buy the Sweat GUTR™ at any major sports retailer or go online here.

Video demo

Website Sweat: www.sweatgutr.com
Facebook Sweat: Coming soon.
Twitter Sweat: Coming soon.

Photos by: Proman racing

The first National Championship Omnium was held at ADT Velodrome, Carson CA  with ProMan’s Cari Higgins coming out on top. Higgins recent success at Pan American Championships, with 4 medals, is an indication that the Boulder resident is on the rise.

Photos by: Proman racing

Higgins finished an impressive first in three of the five events, a second and a fourth place.

“This was the most important race for me this week because I feel like on the world level this is where I’m most competitive,” explained Higgins. “I really wanted to show what I can do in this event and the dominance of our entire ProMan squad.”

Higgins team mate, Christen King took fifth place honors. (second place points race and 3rd place 2k pursuit)  Hanan Alves- Hyde rode a very solid first omnium.

ProMan Racing last year held the inaugural Women’s International Style Omnium at Hellyer Velodrome, San Jose CA. The Omnium consists of five events, 200m, 500m, 2k, points race and scratch race with riders scoring the same number of points as their finishing position in each race. So, five first places would give a final score of five points. Five second places would give a score of 10 points. Lowest points total wins. The Omnium is now a World Championship event and is being considered for the 2012 London Olympics.

Cari will be joined today by 2008 National Scratch race champ Shelley Olds, Christen King, Coryn Rivera, Hanan Alves-Hyde & Lorraine Jarvis. The squad will be racing 500m, team pursuit and scratch race.

British cycling reacted with dismay after the IOC announced that no events would be added to its program at the Olympic Games in 2012, seemingly closing the door on Victoria Pendleton’s chances of more than one gold.

The decision means that the governing body’s campaign for equality in men’s and women’s track cycling events – there are seven men’s and three women’s events – is almost certainly doomed to failure.

British Cycling began lobbying for parity after the Beijing Games, where the female sprinter Pendleton had only one opportunity to win a gold medal while her male counterpart, Chris Hoy, had three. “There isn’t a reason why we shouldn’t have the same number of events as the men,” said Pendleton, the gold medalist in the sprint. The campaign won the backing of the Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, who is expected to meet IOC president Jacques Rogge this weekend in Berlin.

What do you get when you cross a taxi with a bike? A Bixi of course! Having already become an enormous success in Paris and Montreal, the wildly popular Bixi bike sharing program is finally coming to the States early next summer in Boston. Why Boston? The Bixi program was initially developed to cut down on city traffic congestion. If you’ve ever been to and driven in Boston, then you probably are already aware that it is one of most tightly packed and congested cities in the country. So it seems only natural that it be chosen as the trial city for the U.S.

Bikes As A Viable Hassle-Free Transportation Alternative

The Boston program, and its accompanying infrastructure, will closely resemble the Paris and Montreal programs which allow riders to pick up a bike from one of over 280 installed bike stations using a credit card or a Bixi-key (which is essentially a membership card). Similar to how Zipcar works (only with a bike instead of a car), riders can ride their borrowed bikes anywhere they like and then simply return them to a station closest to their final destination. The stations require no locks or locking done on the part of the rider and are designed for ease of use both in the borrowing and returning phase of the rental process.

The program is currently slated to be only in Boston proper at the moment, but there is talk of expanding the program to neighboring Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline in the near future. No firm numbers yet as to how much it will cost riders to use the bikes, but currently in the Montreal program people can pay either a $78 yearly fee for unlimited use or $5 per day. Both prices are extremely cheap when compared to how much it costs to operate and own a car; or even ride public transit.

The Good: A very successful, popular, and inexpensive public transit program that has zero-emissions and improves riders health.

The Bad: The program is only in Boston at the moment with no talks of expanding to other cities. Americans are not known for the propensity for exercise. Many Bostonians are upset that a Canadian company was selected to oversee and operate the program when there are many local bicycle manufacturers.

The Bottom-Line: Though the U.S. program is only in its fledging stage, Bixi could turn out to be a great alternative to single car driving, public transit and an ever increasing waistline.

Via: sincerelysustainable.com